Amazon 2025 Interview | SDE2 | Offer
Summary
I interviewed for an SDE2 role at Amazon, completed several DSA and system‑design rounds, received an offer and ultimately declined it.
Full Experience
In‑person interviews at Amazon office.
Round 1: DSA
First problem was a standard LCA.
Second problem was more interesting — you are given a list of words. You have to start from the smallest length word, and at every step you can add a single character such that the new word also exists in the list. The goal is to find the maximum length word achievable.
I inserted all words into a Trie and then traversed it while ensuring that every prefix along the path was a valid word (i.e., isEnd == true). This way I could directly find the longest valid word that can be built step by step.
Round 2: DSA
First question was a variation of expression evaluation using a stack.
Second was the classic recipes & ingredients problem where recipes can themselves act as ingredients for other recipes. I modeled it as a graph problem and used DFS‑based topological sort with a hashmap. Realised after the interview that BFS would have been much easier for this but was able to complete it well.
Both DSA rounds went really well.
Round 3: System Design
Was asked to design Truecaller.
This didn’t go well — I struggled a bit in structuring the system and trade‑offs. I over complicated the solution by going with a graphDB based approach.
Because the DSA feedback was strong, they scheduled another round.
Round 4: System Design (Retry)
Was asked to design “Save as Draft”.
This was quite open‑ended, so I focused heavily on requirement clarification first and completing with a simple approach. Interviewer added complexity with his follow‑ups but was able to solve them. This round went much better.
Round 5: Hiring Manager
Mostly discussion around past projects and behavioral questions.
Nothing too tricky, went smoothly.
Round 6: Bar Raiser
Started with Kadane’s Algorithm as a warmup.
Then the interviewer said this is standard and gave an interesting puzzle:
Two divers are dropped from airplanes in a 2D plane. They don’t know their coordinates or relative positions (even who is left/right of whom).
Available APIs:
- Move one unit left
- Move one unit right
- Check if both are at same position
Need to design a strategy/program to make them meet.
The key insight that helped me was thinking in terms of exploration similar to fast & slow pointer expansion.
Offer:
- Base: 45
- JB: 32 (18 + 14)
- Stocks: 40 (5/15/25/45 vesting)
- ~65 LPA first year
YOE: 4
Decision: Declined — promotion at Adobe was due in a month and 5‑day WFO wasn’t aligning with my priorities.
Interview Questions (3)
Longest Buildable Word from List
Given a list of words, start from the smallest‑length word. At each step you may add exactly one character to the current word, provided that the resulting new word also exists in the list. Continue this process to build longer words. The goal is to find the maximum length word that can be achieved following these rules.
Recipe Ingredients Dependency
Given a collection of recipes where each recipe may require other recipes as ingredients, determine a valid order to prepare all recipes. This is essentially a dependency problem where recipes can act as ingredients for other recipes.
Two Divers Meeting Puzzle
Two divers are dropped onto a 2‑dimensional plane at unknown coordinates and have no knowledge of their relative positions (they don’t know who is left/right of the other). The only operations available are:
• Move one unit left
• Move one unit right
• Check if both are at the same position
The task is to devise a strategy (or program) that guarantees the two divers will eventually meet.