1739 questions · from 444 interviews · 160 asked more than once
Amazon interview questions
Every question candidates reported from their Amazon interviews, most frequently asked first. Each links to the write-up it came from, so you can see the round and how it went.
Amazon coding and DSA questions
- 01
Word Ladder
Given a begin word, an end word, and a dictionary, find the shortest transformation sequence from begin word to end word such that only one letter can be changed at a time and each intermediate word must exist in the dictionary.
Medium · Asked 9 times · From Amazon
- 02
Number of Islands
Given a 2‑D grid of '1's (land) and '0's (water), count the number of distinct islands. I used a standard DFS/BFS flood‑fill algorithm to explore each island and increment the count.
Medium · Asked 9 times · From Amazon SDE II Interview Experience + Need Honest Feedback
- 03
LRU Cache
Struggled initally to dinf the correct data structure, the interviewer helped in thinking in correct direction. Used Double linked list and Hash Map and solved it completely.
Medium · Asked 9 times · From Amazon SDE 1 Interview Experience 2026
- 04
Search in Rotated Sorted Array
Given an integer array that has been rotated at an unknown pivot and a target value, find the index of the target. If the target is not present, return -1.
Medium · Asked 8 times · From Amazon SDE-1 Interview Experience | Offer Received
- 05
Course Schedule II
Given the total number of courses and a list of prerequisite pairs, return a possible order in which you can finish all courses. If it is impossible to finish all courses, return an empty array.
Medium · Asked 8 times · From Amazon SDE 2 (L5) | Bangalore | Interview Experience
- 06
Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters
Given a string, find the length of the longest substring that does not contain any repeating characters.
Medium · Asked 7 times · From Amazon Hackon (SDE-Intern 10490515)
- 07
Find Median from Data Stream
Design a data structure that supports inserting numbers from a data stream and retrieving the median of all inserted numbers at any point in O(log n) time per operation.
Medium · Asked 7 times · From Amazon SDE-2 Experience
- 08
Trapping Rain Water
Given an array of non‑negative integers representing elevation map heights, compute how much rain water can be trapped after raining.
Medium · Asked 6 times · From Amazon
- 09
Reorganize String
Given a string S , rearrange the characters so that no two adjacent characters are the same. Return any possible rearranged string, or an empty string if no such arrangement exists.
Medium · Asked 6 times · From AMAZON SDE 2 (L5) | SPAIN | 9 YOE
- 10
Merge Intervals
Given an array of intervals where intervals[i] = [starti, endi], merge all overlapping intervals, and return an array of the non-overlapping intervals that cover all the intervals in the input.
Medium · Asked 6 times · From Amazon SDE1 FTC Interview Experience
- 11
Sliding Window Maximum
The problem involved finding the maximum element within each contiguous subarray (or window) of a given size k as the window slides across an array. I recognized it as the well-known Sliding Window Maximum problem, often solved efficiently using a deque.
Hard · Asked 5 times · From Amazon SDE1 FTC Interview Experience
- 12
House Robber
Given values in houses arranged in a line, find the maximum value that can be stolen without robbing two adjacent houses. Input: [6, 7, 1, 3, 8, 2, 4] Output: 19
Easy · Asked 5 times · From Amazon SDE-2 (India) Interview Experience — Result: Rejected
- 13
Rotting Oranges
Rotten oranges (graph BFS)
Medium · Asked 5 times · From Amazon || SDE - 2 || 3 YOE || Accepted offer
- 14
Asteroid Collision
Asteriod collisions (Stack)
Medium · Asked 5 times · From Amazon || SDE - 2 || 3 YOE || Accepted offer
- 15
Two Sum
Given an array of integers nums and an integer target , return indices of the two numbers such that they add up to target .
Easy · Asked 5 times · From 🔥 Amazon SDE Interview Questions (Real Experiences + LeetCode Links)
- 16
Group Anagrams
A coding problem to Group Anagrams, which I solved completely.
Medium · Asked 5 times · From Amazon L5 (SDE II) | Bangalore | May 2025
- 17
Rotten Oranges
Given a grid containing fresh, rotten, and empty oranges, determine the minimum minutes required for all fresh oranges to become rotten, where each minute rotten oranges rot adjacent fresh ones.
Medium · Asked 4 times · From Amazon
- 18
Capacity To Ship Packages Within D Days
LeetCode problem: Capacity To Ship Packages Within D Days. Solved using binary search on answer.
Medium · Asked 4 times · From Amazon SDE2 Interview Experience | AUG 26 | BLR | 3.3 YOE
- 19
Cheapest Flights Within K Stops
LeetCode problem: Cheapest Flights Within K Stops. Solved using a graph/BFS based minimum‑weight algorithm.
Medium · Asked 4 times · From Amazon SDE2 Interview Experience | AUG 26 | BLR | 3.3 YOE
- 20
Remove K Digits
Given a non‑negative integer num represented as a string, remove exactly k digits from the number so that the new number is the smallest possible. The resulting number should not contain leading zeros.
Medium · Asked 4 times · From Amazon SDE Intern Interview Experience — SDE Intern
- 21
House Robber II
Given a circular array of non‑negative integers representing the amount of money of each house, you cannot rob two adjacent houses. Determine the maximum amount of money you can rob without triggering the alarm.
Medium · Asked 4 times · From Amazon SDE-2 OA Experience || Rejected
- 22
First Missing Positive
Find the first missing positive integer in an unsorted array using array indexing / cyclic sort.
Hard · Asked 4 times · From Amazon Interview Experience SDE 1 (DSA-focused)
- 23
Longest Palindromic Substring
I was asked to solve the Longest Palindromic Substring problem.
Medium · Asked 4 times · From Amazon SDE-1 Interview Experience | Rejected 2026
- 24
Pacific Atlantic Water Flow
Given a matrix representing heights, find cells from which water can flow to both Pacific ocean (top and left edges) and Atlantic ocean (bottom and right edges). Water flows to cells with equal or lower height.
Medium · Asked 4 times · From Amazon SDE Intern(6m) Interview Experience
- 25
Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock
You are given an array prices where prices[i] is the price of a given stock on the i -th day. Find the maximum profit you can achieve by buying on one day and selling on a different day.
Easy · Asked 4 times · From 🔥 Amazon SDE Interview Questions (Real Experiences + LeetCode Links)
934 more in the Amazon write-ups.
Amazon system design questions
- 01
Design a Rate Limiter
Design a low‑level rate limiter that restricts the number of requests allowed per a given time window. The design should be object‑oriented, suitable for implementation in C++, and handle concurrency considerations if needed.
Hard · Asked 8 times · From Amazon : SWE New Grad 2026 USA: Interview Experience
- 02
Design Amazon Locker System
Design a high‑level system for an Amazon Locker service. Requirements: - Delivery driver deposits a package. - Customer receives a code. - Customer unlocks locker using the code. - Locker allocation, OTP/code validation, expiry handling. - Support multiple…
Asked 5 times · From Amazon SDE2 Interview Experience
- 03
Design a Parking Lot
Design a parking lot. I gathered the requirements and listed the classes with their behaviour and attributes. I also listed the design patterns to be used. Then he asked me to implement couple of methods in the design, which I did.
Medium · Asked 5 times · From Amazon SDE - II Interview Experience
- 04
Design a URL Shortener
Design a URL shortener. This included discussing Functional Requirements (FR), Non-Functional Requirements (NFR), API design, database schema, and high-level design.
Hard · Asked 3 times · From Amazon SDE 2 Interview Experience
- 05
Design BookMyShow
Design the BookMyShow system. This was a very vague problem statement, requiring me to lead the complete discussion, designing classes, methods, and interfaces. Towards the end, I was also asked about database choices for storing different entities,…
Hard · Asked 3 times · From Amazon SDE 2 Backend Interview Exp || Offer || August
- 06
Parking Lot System Design
Design a parking lot system that supports multiple vehicle types and different spot categories. The design should be extensible to handle additional requirements with minimal changes.
Asked 2 times · From Amazon SDE 1 - Full Interview Loop Experience (Selected ✅)
- 07
Design Issue Management System
I was asked to design an Issue Management System that supports different priorities, escalations, and a wait queue for issues.
Asked 2 times · From Amazon SDE 2 Interview Experience
- 08
Design Parking Lot System
I was asked to design a Parking Lot system. Since this was an HLD round and the question felt more like an LLD problem, I got a bit confused and ended up discussing the LLD aspects. The interviewer was supportive and still asked meaningful questions relevant…
Asked 2 times · From Amazon SDE 2 Interview Experience
- 09
Design Twitter
Design Twitter, described as a LeetCode-style system design problem.
Hard · Asked 2 times · From Amazon SDE2 Onsite Experience – Lessons Learned
- 10
- 11
Low-Level Design: Amazon Locker System
The third question was a low-level design problem for an Amazon Locker system. I asked clarifying questions, came up with the classes, mentioned my assumptions, and came up with the code for a minimum viable product (MVP).
Hard · Asked 2 times · From Amazon Phone Screen | SDE 2 | USA
- 12
Amazon Locker Service Design
Design a locker service for packages with the following functions: 1. A function to return the appropriate locker to be opened when a package is received. 2. A function to retrieve a package for a given customer. Assume packages can be of 3 sizes: small,…
Asked 2 times · From Amazon | SDE 2 (L5) | Bangalore | April 2024 [Offer]
- 13
Design Auto Complete/Search Recommendations
Design an auto-complete or search recommendation system for Amazon Search. Assume a ranking algorithm is provided that returns the search priority. The target is to show the top 5 search recommendations.
Asked 2 times · From Amazon | SDE 2 (L5) | Bangalore | April 2024 [Offer]
- 14
Amazon Delivery Estimation Service Design
Design an Amazon Delivery Estimation Service. Identify functional and non‑functional requirements, discuss scalability, accuracy, latency, reliability, and other quality attributes needed for a real‑time delivery estimation system.
From 🚀 Amazon SDE 2 Interview Experience | Alexa Devices | 2.8 YOE | May/June 2026
- 15
Job Scheduler System with Dependent Jobs Design
Design a job scheduler system that can handle jobs with dependencies. The system should schedule, execute, and monitor jobs, ensuring that dependent jobs run only after their prerequisites complete successfully.
From 🚀 Amazon SDE 2 Interview Experience | Alexa Devices | 2.8 YOE | May/June 2026
- 16
Netflix Subscription System Design
Design a system similar to Netflix subscription service, covering user management, subscription plans, content catalog, streaming, and scalability considerations.
From 🚀 Amazon SDE 2 Interview Experience | Alexa Devices | 2.8 YOE | May/June 2026
- 17
User Migration with Saga Pattern Design
Design a solution to migrate users from an old database to a new database while keeping the same API, using the Saga pattern to ensure data consistency across the migration steps.
From 🚀 Amazon SDE 2 Interview Experience | Alexa Devices | 2.8 YOE | May/June 2026
- 18
Design Simple Banking System
Design a system that supports the following operations for a user: Deposit money Credit money Generate a summary of transactions Apply tax to operations Allow for future extensions (e.g., new transaction types) The design should be modular and easily…
- 19
Employee Directory System Design
Design an Employee Directory for a company with about one million employees. The system should allow searching by name, email, or employee ID, viewing an employee's profile, and navigating the organizational hierarchy (manager and direct reports). The…
- 20
Design a parking ticketing/receipt system
Design the basic architecture of a parking ticketing and receipt system. The candidate was asked to add new functionality and consider pricing variations for peak and non‑peak hours.
- 21
Heatmap System Design for Sensor Devices
Design a system where sensor devices are evenly distributed across a continent, emitting temperature information. The system must create a heatmap of the latest temperatures and also allow users to query historical temperature data.
- 22
Design Attendance Management System
Design an attendance management system for hourly employees. Gather requirements, define assumptions, design APIs, data model, event flow, and address scalability, consistency, failure handling, and observability.
Hard · From Amazon SDE-2 Interview Experience - Selected
- 23
Design Terminal‑based File Search Utility
Create a command‑line utility that searches files based on attributes such as name, size, extension, etc., and supports complex queries combining filters with logical AND/OR. Emphasize an extensible object‑oriented architecture.
Medium · From Amazon SDE-2 Interview Experience - Selected
- 24
Billing Service Design
Design a billing service for a cloud platform for a single user. The service receives the usage of various services and their respective rates, and must compute the total bill. Consider scalability, data storage, rate updates, and API design.
- 25
Design an Inventory Management System
System design question: Design an Inventory Management System for Amazon. Discussed race conditions, concurrency, inventory consistency, locking/transaction approaches to prevent overselling.
From Amazon SDE2 Interview Experience | AUG 26 | BLR | 3.3 YOE
306 more in the Amazon write-ups.
Amazon behavioural and HR questions
- 01
Behavioral Questions (Amazon LPs)
Two behavioral questions were asked, based on Amazon's Leadership Principles.
Asked 4 times · From Amazon L5 (SDE II) | Bangalore | June 2025 | Selected
- 02
Amazon Leadership Principles Discussion
Discussion centered around Amazon's Leadership Principles, covering behavioral aspects and past experiences relevant to these principles.
Asked 2 times · From Amazon SDE2 Interview Experience (Full Loop)
- 03
Tell me about a time you learned something new
Describe a situation where you had to learn something new. What was it, how did you approach learning it, and what was the outcome?
Asked 2 times · From Amazon SDE-1 Interview Experience | Verdict - SELECTED ✅
- 04
Stepping Out of Comfort Zone
Tell me about a time you stepped out of your comfort zone
Asked 2 times · From [USA] | Amazon SDE II Process | Rejected
- 05
Behavioral: Ownership
Behavioral questions focused on the leadership principle 'Ownership', asking about past projects and experiences related to taking responsibility and driving results.
Asked 2 times · From Amazon | SDE-2 | Hyderabad (In-person + Virtual)
- 06
Amazon Leadership Principles
I was asked multiple questions related to Amazon's Leadership Principles. The interviewer stressed the importance of structuring my responses using the STAR method and elaborating on past experiences in detail. This section of the interview lasted over 40…
Asked 2 times · From Amazon Dublin Frontend Engineer FEE (New Grad) – Rejected After Phone Screen
- 07
Taking Ownership
Tell me about a time when you took ownership.
Asked 2 times · From SDE-2 Offer at Amazon
- 08
Behavioral: Conflict Resolution
Describe a situation involving conflict and how you handled it.
Asked 2 times · From Amazon US SDE 1 | Offer
- 09
Behavioral: Tell me about a time you failed.
Tell me about a time you failed.
Asked 2 times · From Amazon | SDE II | USA | Onsite Interview | Offer
- 10
Overcoming Negative Feedback
How did you overcome a situation where you have been given a negative feedback?
Asked 2 times · From Amazon | SDE-1 (L4 - New Grad) | Bangalore | Jan 2025 Offer | Select ✅
- 11
Leadership Principle: Issue Resolution at Scale
Tell about a time when I solved an issue on scale by deep diving in the internals. How did I lead it, what was the impact.
- 12
Leadership Principles and Past Projects
The Bar Raiser round included 30 minutes of Leadership Principles (LP) questions, which involved deep grilling about my past projects and experiences.
- 13
Describe a time you compromised quality to deliver quickly.
Describe a situation where you had to compromise on quality to meet a tight deadline and deliver quickly.
- 14
Share an instance where you improved an existing process.
Tell me about a time you identified an inefficiency and improved an existing process within your team.
- 15
Describe owning a module end to end.
Tell me about a time you owned a module or project from conception to completion, end to end.
- 16
Describe a conflict with your manager.
Share an experience where you had a conflict or disagreement with your manager and how you resolved it.
- 17
Describe simplifying something for a customer.
Tell me about a time you simplified a complex process or product feature to make it easier for a customer.
- 18
Describe going above and beyond for a customer.
Share an example where you went above and beyond your standard duties to deliver exceptional results for a customer.
- 19
Describe delivering impact with vague requirements.
Tell me about a time you had to deliver something impactful despite having vague or ambiguous requirements.
- 20
Behavioral: Describe a Complex Problem
Describe a complex problem I solved in my past experience.
- 21
Leadership Principle: Production System Breakage & Resolution
Tell a time where you broke a production system or you were on call while it broke, what steps you took and how you resolved it.
From Amazon | SDE 2 | 4th time rejected | Jan 2026 | Bangalore
- 22
Leadership Principle: Leading/Developing a Technical Project
Tell a time where you led or developed a technical project. How did you proceed about the same? What was the success metric for the project?
From Amazon | SDE 2 | 4th time rejected | Jan 2026 | Bangalore
- 23
Leadership Principle: Taking Lead on Issues and Resolution
Tell me a time where you took the lead and saw some issues, then resolved them.
From Amazon | SDE 2 | 4th time rejected | Jan 2026 | Bangalore
- 24
Leadership Principle: Facing Tight Deadlines
Tell me a time where you faced tight deadlines and how you ensured that those were met.
From Amazon | SDE 2 | 4th time rejected | Jan 2026 | Bangalore
- 25
Leadership Principle: Solving Complex Problems Simply
When did you solve a complex problem with a simple solution?
From Amazon | SDE 2 | 4th time rejected | Jan 2026 | Bangalore
336 more in the Amazon write-ups.
Amazon other questions
- 01
Merge K Sorted Lists
Merge k sorted linked lists into one sorted list.
Hard · Asked 7 times · From Amazon last 6 months DSA question compilation
- 02
Max Consecutive Ones III
Find the maximum number of consecutive 1s in a binary array you can get by flipping at most k 0s to 1s.
Medium · Asked 3 times · From Amazon last 6 months DSA question compilation
- 03
Best Time To Buy And Sell Stock II
Find the maximum profit that can be achieved by buying and selling stocks on different days, with the constraint that you can only hold one stock at a time.
Easy · Asked 3 times · From Amazon last 6 months DSA question compilation
- 04
Magnetic Force Between Two Balls
Calculate the maximum possible minimum distance between two balls placed in a line of positions, given certain constraints on their placement.
Hard · Asked 2 times · From Amazon last 6 months DSA question compilation
- 05
Longest Valid Parentheses
Find the length of the longest valid parentheses substring in a given string.
Hard · Asked 2 times · From Amazon last 6 months DSA question compilation
- 06
Integer To English Words
Convert an integer to its English words representation.
Hard · Asked 2 times · From Amazon last 6 months DSA question compilation
- 07
Design Tic-Tac-Toe Game
I was asked to design and implement a Tic-Tac-Toe game, considering aspects like game state management, player turns, winning conditions, and possibly handling different board sizes or AI players (though the specifics varied).
Asked 2 times · From Amazon || SDE-2 || Interview Experience
- 08
Job Scheduling Strategy Design
Design a job‑scheduling system that can schedule and execute jobs based on priority levels (LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH) and request type (adhoc or periodic). The scheduler must handle both background (periodic) requests and foreground (adhoc) requests, ensuring…
From Amazon Interview Experience | 5 YOE | Automation Tester to SDE II | Selected
- 09
Split Payment and Settlement System Design
Design a system for group purchases that tracks each user’s contribution, identifies deadbeat participants (who have not paid), manages settlement deadlines, and handles refund distribution when needed.
From Amazon Interview Experience | 5 YOE | Automation Tester to SDE II | Selected
- 10
Physical Joins vs Hash Join vs Broadcast Nested Loop Join
Explain the differences between Physical Joins, Hash Join, and Broadcast Nested Loop Join, including when each join type is used and their performance characteristics.
- 11
GROUP BY vs Window Functions
Describe the difference between using GROUP BY and Window Functions in SQL, and give examples of scenarios where a window function is preferred.
- 12
Slowly Changing Dimensions (SCD Types)
Explain the concept of Slowly Changing Dimensions and detail the different SCD types (Type 0, Type 1, Type 2, Type 3, etc.) and their use cases.
- 13
Star Schema vs Snowflake Schema
Compare Star Schema and Snowflake Schema in data warehousing, highlighting the structural differences and trade‑offs in query performance and normalization.
- 14
SQL Query Optimization Strategies
Discuss various techniques to optimize SQL queries, such as indexing, query rewriting, using appropriate joins, and analyzing execution plans.
- 15
Data Warehouse vs Data Lake vs Lakehouse
Explain the differences between a Data Warehouse, a Data Lake, and a Lakehouse architecture, covering storage, schema enforcement, and typical use cases.
- 16
Batch Architecture vs Event‑Driven Incremental Ingestion
Contrast traditional batch processing architectures with event‑driven incremental ingestion pipelines, focusing on latency, complexity, and scalability.
- 17
Idempotency in Data Processing
Define idempotency in the context of data pipelines and discuss how to achieve idempotent operations in ETL workflows.
- 18
Change Data Capture (CDC)
Explain what Change Data Capture is, how it works, and common techniques/tools used to implement CDC in data pipelines.
- 19
Consecutive User Logins SQL Query
Write a SQL query to find users who have logged in on consecutive days (e.g., day N and day N+1). The query should return the user id and the dates of the consecutive logins.
- 20
Package Tracking & Status Aggregator Engine
Build a high-performance engine that consumes a master JSON list of shipments (with delivery rules and deadlines) and a live JSONL stream of carrier scanner events. The engine must aggregate scanner data to determine the current location of each shipment,…
From Amazon OA 2026
- 21
Backend Banking App Access Control
Full Stack Coding question involving AI agent. Design backend Banking App which has security flaws that allow unauthorized access to other accounts. Users are able to view transactions that do not belong to their accounts. Your task is to fix the access…
- 22
Investigating High Latency in Production
Explain how you would investigate a scenario where users are experiencing high latency in a production system.
From Amazon SDE 1 - Full Interview Loop Experience (Selected ✅)
- 23
API test case enumeration for /orders endpoint
Enumerate test cases for an API POST request /orders with parameters: itemId (string), quantity (integer 1‑100), shipping address (object).
- 24
Test strategy for a payment microservice
Design a test strategy for a payment microservice, describing how you would develop and execute it.
- 25
Stack Implementation Using LinkedList
Design a generic Stack class supporting push(), pop(), peek() methods with error handling for empty stack scenarios.
Easy · From 🚀 Amazon SDE Interview Experience (4 Rounds)
63 more in the Amazon write-ups.
Amazon interview questions FAQ
What questions are asked in Amazon interviews?
Candidates reported 1739 distinct questions across 444 Amazon interviews. 959 coding and DSA questions, 331 system design questions, 361 behavioural and HR questions, 88 other questions.
Which Amazon interview questions are asked most often?
The most repeated are "Word Ladder" (9 times), "Number of Islands" (9 times), "LRU Cache" (9 times), "Design a Rate Limiter" (8 times), "Search in Rotated Sorted Array" (8 times).
How difficult are Amazon interview questions?
Of the questions candidates rated, 9% were easy, 59% medium and 32% hard.