I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Mar 2014
Interview
I submitted the resume on the Amazon Career website and received a email about an untraditional group interview event about ten days later. And after I confirmed the date I received flights and hotel reservation in two days.
On the interview day I came to the Amazon campus and was shown around the campus before the interview started. Then we were divided into group of 3 people and given a project. We needed to discuss on which part each of us would choose and after that we were about to work on our own part. We were free to choose any programming language we like. According to the Non-Disclosure Agreement I would not reveal what the project was about, but it was challenging and really practical. During the coding process we were called out twice for individual interviews, which were about the progress of your project. The interviewers were very friendly and I did not feel as stressed as normal interviews. One thing I need to mention is that the group interviews are only for students.
The interview was on Friday and after some negotiation I received the official offer letter on Tuesday, and the offer was really nice. I really enjoyed the whole interview process. And if you are a good coder, this kind of interview will definitely be a great chance for you.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
All questions I was asked about was about the project.
Surprisingly easy — I expected tougher questions, but the coding round felt more like a warm-up. The main challenge was a DSA problem about counting islands in a 2D grid, which led to a discussion on DFS versus BFS and handling large grids. Funny enough, I had revisited that exact type of question while prepping on PracHub, which made me feel more confident. The interview wrapped up with a behavioral round, and I accepted an offer, but ultimately decided to decline it for another opportunity. Overall, it was a smooth experience.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Number of Islands — given a 2D grid of '1's (land) and '0's (water), count the number of connected islands. Walk through DFS vs BFS, and discuss how to avoid revisiting cells (in-place mutation vs visited set) and what changes if the grid is huge and must stream from disk.
It started with an OA, and then after a few weeks, I got invited to four rounds of interviews: technical and behavioral at 3 of the 4, and behavioral only at one.
I applied online. I interviewed at Amazon (Calgary, AB) in Jun 2026
Interview
Online Assessment is the first step in the process. I didn’t have an HR phone screening and went straight to the OA after applying. It was sent to me about a week after I submitted my application.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The first question is LeetCode style algorithms question, and the second question gives a full stack repo (choice of Java, NodeJS, or Django) and asks to solve a backend issue which is causing a bug in the frontend. Unit tests must pass to pass the second question. You can run both backend/frontend indivdually or together