I applied through university. The process took 4 months. I interviewed at Amazon in Mar 2014
Interview
I went to the University's career fair and talked to one of their recruiter, then I got an opportunity for the online test. However I did that test several months later. All the questions are very strait forwarded. If you are a CS student you will finish them. Remember you need to give the time complexity.
Finally I got an onsite interview opportunity in Seattle. Their HR is very nice. And the trip is arranged very well. 4 rounds of the onsite interviews. All coding plus basic CS questions. Very little on the resume. Remember to finish them fast. I didn't get the offer may because of that,
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Be prepared for the object oriented design question. And try to explain your idea clearly.
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