Amazon SDE interview: process, rounds and questions

Written by Mentari as typical of this process — not a record of questions Amazon has asked. Each comes with the follow-up a good interviewer asks next and what they listen for in the answer. Scenario details are our framing, chosen to fit Amazon’s sector.

1. 01 A warehouse robot follows a list of instructions where each step points to the next. Some lists never end. Detect that.

   Follow-up · Now tell me where the loop starts, without extra memory.

   Listens for · Recognises cycle detection in a story; Floyd’s algorithm explained, then the loop-start trick.

2. 02 Deliveries form a tree of locations with costs; find the maximum-value path that visits each node at most once.

   Follow-up · Which subproblem did you define, and why does it combine correctly at each node?

   Listens for · Tree DP with the state stated clearly before coding.

3. 03 Return the kth largest element from a stream of order values as they arrive.

   Follow-up · Why a heap of size k rather than keeping everything sorted?

   Listens for · Min-heap of size k chosen deliberately and defended on cost.

Compiled from 11 candidate reports (2024–2026) and the official hiring page. Where reports differ, the range is shown rather than one number.

Online assessment — official structure plus campus variants — Amazon’s SDE OA page lists coding (~70 min), Workstyles (~15 min), Work Simulation (~60 min, full-time only) and a feedback survey (~5 min). Campus reports add, in some drives, 20–28 MCQs on aptitude and C/C++ output, or seven code-debugging questions in 20 minutes, and one 2025 SDE-1 report describes a three-hour proctored sitting. Two DSA problems is the constant.^2,10,11,12

1. Do two DSA problems in 70 minutes, then write one Leadership Principles answer in the remaining time. That is the official coding section length, and the behavioural thread starts in the OA Workstyles section.
2. Read Amazon’s Leadership Principles and attach one real decision from a project or internship to each of six of them. Every interview account pairs DSA with Leadership Principles questions answered with examples.
3. Practise problems posed as stories — reframe a LeetCode problem as a delivery or inventory scenario and solve it from the description. Interview problems are reported as contextual, not named.
4. Narrate: approach, complexity, optimisation, test cases — in that order, every time. Selected candidates credit the narration; interviewers hint when you drift and notice whether you take it.
5. Take a workplace-judgement practice test once. The full-time Work Simulation is an hour of scenarios with no code, and candidates report not expecting it.
6. Revise heaps, graph traversal, sliding window, prefix sums and linked-list manipulation. These are the reported topics across 2024–26 drives.
7. Check the OA email for the exact structure before you sit it. Amazon says the OA is one or two parts depending on the country and the invitation.

What Amazon says it assesses

• Four steps: apply, online assessment, virtual interviews, offer — "depending on the outcome of your OA, our recruiting team may invite you to interview"¹
• The full-time OA evaluates "coding skills, technical problem solving, and Amazon’s Leadership Principles"²
• Preferred qualifications for SDE-1: a prior technical internship; experience with distributed, multi-tiered systems, algorithms and relational databases³

What candidates report being probed on

• DSA problems set in a story rather than named — detect the cycle in a dependency chain, optimise a tree-shaped delivery route^4,8
• Explain the approach before coding, then complexity, then optimisations; interviewers give subtle hints when you drift^7,8,5
• Leadership Principles with concrete examples — ownership, conflict, learning from failure, pressure and deadlines^5,9
• Internship impact and decisions made in workplace scenarios^9,5
• Work-style statements in the OA, tied to the Leadership Principles^4,5

Amazon is the big-tech recruiter that tells you the most in advance. Its SDE OA page lists the sections and their timings, says the structure depends on the country and the invitation, and names what the assessment measures — coding, problem solving and the Leadership Principles. The Work Simulation, where used, is unusual: an hour of workplace scenarios scored on judgement, with no code in it, that candidates from coding-only backgrounds report not expecting.

The interviews then run the two threads together. Every recent account pairs one or two DSA problems with Leadership Principles questions in the same 60-minute Chime call, and the DSA problems are posed in a story — a dependency chain with a loop, a delivery tree — so that recognising the underlying problem is part of the test. Candidates who were selected credit two habits: narrating the approach before coding, and answering the behavioural questions with specific decisions from internships and projects rather than attitudes. What follows is the shape of the assessment, not a problem list.

Where the sources disagree

The official OA page and the campus accounts tell the same skeleton and differ on the trimmings. Amazon states a ~70-minute coding section with Workstyles and, for full-time, a Work Simulation; campus reports from August 2024 to 2025 add MCQs (20 in one drive, 28 in another), seven debugging questions in 20 minutes in a third, and a three-hour proctored sitting in a 2025 SDE-1 account — all consistent with the official warning that the structure varies and is set in the invitation. Interview counts range from one 70-minute Chime call (Sri City, March 2025) to two 60-minute rounds plus HR (Bengaluru, February 2025; the 2026 HackOn and campus intern accounts). The 2026 accounts rate the interviews easy to medium and the OA as the filter. No official page gives a CGPA cut-off; listings give degree requirements and graduation year.

4. 04 Tell me about a time you took ownership of something that was not your responsibility.

   Follow-up · What did your manager say when you asked to own it — and what if they had said no?

   Listens for · A specific decision, a specific conversation, and a plan for the refusal.

5. 05 Schedule n tasks with cooldowns using the fewest idle slots. Approach first.

   Follow-up · Your greedy works — convince me it is optimal, not just plausible.

   Listens for · Heap-based greedy, then a proof sketch — the optimisation-and-justification step candidates report.

6. 06 Clone a linked list whose nodes also point to random other nodes.

   Follow-up · Do it without the hash map.

   Listens for · Interleaving trick on prompting; explains why it preserves the random pointers.

7. 07 Tell me about a disagreement with a teammate about an approach. How was it resolved?

   Follow-up · Were they right about anything? What did you change in how you work?

   Listens for · Fairness to the other side and a concrete change — Leadership Principles answered with evidence.

8. 08 You are two days from a deadline and discover your approach will not scale. What do you do?

   Follow-up · Walk me through the exact message you send, and to whom.

   Listens for · Early, specific communication and a decision — not heroics.

9. 09 In your internship, what did you ship, and what would the team say changed because of it?

   Follow-up · What was the trade-off you made that you would make differently now?

   Listens for · Impact stated plainly with a reflective trade-off — the internship-impact probe in 2026 accounts.

Tell me about a time you took ownership of something that was not your responsibility.

Weak · "In my internship a teammate was struggling with a module, so I helped them finish it even though it was not my task, because I believe in ownership and teamwork."

Stronger · "Our data pipeline failed every Monday and nobody owned it — it was between two teams. I spent a Saturday tracing it to a timezone bug in a cron entry, fixed it, wrote a one-page runbook and asked my manager to assign it to me formally. The failures stopped; the runbook was used twice after I left."

Why the follow-up lands · The interviewer asks "what did your manager say when you asked to own it?" The strong answer has the conversation; the weak one has "I believe in ownership".

Illustrative — yours must be true.

An Amazon campus drive is an official OA — coding ~70 minutes plus Workstyles, with a Work Simulation for full-time roles and campus-specific MCQs or debugging in some drives — then one or two 60-minute Chime interviews pairing DSA with Leadership Principles. Amazon publishes the structure but no cut-off; the campus notice sets filters. Cohort levers are timed two-problem practice and behavioural answers tied to the Leadership Principles.

Mentari’s software-engineer mock leaves the coding to the platforms and rehearses the Leadership Principles half of the Amazon interview — ownership, conflict, deadlines, answered with specific decisions — and the narrated reasoning interviewers listen for. Run Amazon-pattern mocks for a whole batch.

• Software engineer mock interview
• Google interview
• Microsoft interview
• STAR Method Answers That Survive Follow-ups
• Is ChatGPT a Good Mock Interviewer?
• All company guides →

1. University SDE — career programs — Amazon.jobs (official) · official · accessed 2026-10-23 · apply, online assessment, virtual interviews, offer
2. SDE Online Assessment — how we hire — Amazon.jobs (official) · official · accessed 2026-10-23 · section timings; structure varies by country
3. Software Dev Engineer I — Amazon University Talent Acquisition (India) — Amazon.jobs (official) · official · accessed 2026-10-23
4. On-campus Amazon interview experience — SDE-1 intern (Sri City, March 2025) — GeeksforGeeks · candidate report, 2025-03 · accessed 2026-10-23
5. Amazon India SDE intern interview experience — Bangalore (February 2025) — interviewexperiences.in · candidate report, 2025-02 · accessed 2026-10-23 · 90-minute OA; two 60-minute Chime rounds; HR after selection
6. Amazon India interview experience — SDE 6-month internship (assessments September 2024) — GeeksforGeeks · candidate report, 2024-09 · accessed 2026-10-23
7. Amazon interview experience — on-campus, August 2024 — Naukri Campus · candidate report, 2024-08 · accessed 2026-10-23
8. Amazon SDE intern interview experience — India 2026 — takeUforward community · candidate report, 2026-10 · accessed 2026-10-23
9. Amazon SDE intern (HackOn, 6-month) interview experience — 2026, selected — takeUforward community · candidate report, 2026-09 · accessed 2026-10-23
10. Amazon interview experience set 305 — on-campus internship — GeeksforGeeks · candidate report, 2025-02 · accessed 2026-10-23 · 20 MCQs plus two coding problems in 90 minutes
11. Amazon interview experience — SDE 2-month internship, on-campus — GeeksforGeeks · candidate report, 2025-03 · accessed 2026-10-23 · seven debugging questions in 20 minutes plus two problems in 70
12. Amazon India OA experience — SDE-1 (July 2025) — GeeksforGeeks · candidate report, 2025-07 · accessed 2026-10-23 · three-hour proctored sitting
13. Amazon on campus: eligibility and drive structure — useastra.in · candidate report · accessed 2026-10-23 · preparation-site compilation
14. Amazon recruitment process — FACE Prep · candidate report · accessed 2026-10-23 · preparation-site compilation

Verified October 2026 by Sumit Mishra, Mentari founder. Spotted an error, or represent Amazon? Write to [email protected] — we acknowledge within two working days and correct or remove a disputed statement within 72 hours.

Mentari is not affiliated with Amazon. This page is pattern-based, compiled from the public sources listed, and is not insider information. Candidate-reported details are reproduced as patterns only, in our own words.