Amazon Interview Experience | 5 YOE | Automation Tester to SDE II | Selected

Had a recruiter reached through Linkedin sharing OA link.

Round 1:

Attended OA 2 days after recruiter reached out.
OA consisted below sections:

1. First section had two coding problems:
   • An AI integrated coding environment where the problem is to solve the issue in search functionality in the Amazon movie repository. There were 6 tests to be passed. Got 3/6 passed.
   • A hard DSA problem based on Queue and Binary Search (couldn't remember the question exactly) - one TC alone wasn't passed
2. Second section is work-style assessment
3. Third section is Behavioural + Leadership principles

4 days after, HR reached out telling that I cleared the Online assessment.

Interview Loop:

Round 1: DSA (In Amazon office) - Pen and Paper
Both the problems were easy - medium difficulty.

1. Given a stream of temperature ranges, need to alert when encountered with 5 continuously strictly increasing temperature.
2. Greedy problem: Given n number of ad slots available and m companies each having a specific number of ad requests and the amount that they can provide for each ad, find the maximum profit that we can achieve.

I was able to solve both the questions with optimal Time Complexity.
Final 10 mins spent on Leadership principles.
The interviewer was friendly and was able to connect with her well and good.
This was an elimination round, 3/8 people got eliminated.

Round 2: LLD (In Amazon office) - Pen and Paper
Design a Job scheduling strategy to schedule and execute jobs based on priority (LOW,MEDIUM,HIGH) and based on request (adhoc/periodic). The scheduling need to accept both background requests and forerunning requests.

I was able to design classes and attributes to a certain extent and was able to explain the core scheduling logic not with so optimal approach. However as the interviewer was friendly and helpful, he reduced the scope, also accepted my oral explanation rather than expecting clean written code.
Final 10 mins were spent on Leadership principles.
This was also an elimination round. One got eliminated.

Since the HM wasn't available, HM round was scheduled 5 days after virtually.

Round 3: HLD with Hiring Manager - Bluescape editor
First 20-25 mins was on Leadership Principles and past project experience.
Design a split payment and settlement system for group purchases where system should keep track of users contributions, deadbeat participants (who haven't paid any contribution), settlement deadlines and refund distribution.

Went blank on reading the problem statement, was trying to figure out and understand requirements for 15-20 mins. Had only 15 mins remaining and was able to sketch only basic HLD diagram with servers, DB and routing. Wasn't able to answer few follow-ups.
As per HR update, the feedback was mixed for this round.
I thought I bombed this round.

Surprisingly, bar raiser round was scheduled 5 days after.

Round 4: Bar raiser
First 20-25 mins was on Leadership Principles and past project experience.
A medium-hard graph problem based on Dijkstra's algorithm. Was able to solve in 20 mins and explained Time and Space complexity.
No follow-ups and the interview ended in 45 mins.

1 week later, HR told that I am Selected! Below is package details.

• Base: 45 L
• RSU vested over 4 years: 28.5 L
• 1st year bonus: 15.5 L
• 2nd year bonus: 12 L
• Total: 62 LPA approx.

Preparation details:

Journey: Automation tester in Fintech company with 5 years experience currently. Been preparing for 5 months.

• LP (has more weightage): ChatGPT
• DSA: Leetcode - 270 problems solved
• LLD: Ashish - awesome-low-level-design
• HLD: ByteByteGo, Alex Xu Volume 1 book and Hellointerview YouTube videos.

PS: I didn't learn even one Dynamic Programming problem, luckily I didn't encounter even one through these rounds, the interviewers I faced were more friendly and helpful, this is my first interview in my switch journey, no prior interview/mock interviews, so yet, luck favoured a lot and was able to get through it. If I can, anybody reading this can do. Thanks for reading, All the best!