Amazon Interview Experience | SDE-1 Intern | DSA Round + Gen-AI Round
Summary
I interviewed for an Amazon SDE-1 Intern position, completed an online assessment and two interview rounds (DSA and GenAI), but was rejected.
Full Experience
Hi everyone,
I recently interviewed for the Amazon SDE Intern role on campus. Sharing my experience.
Timeline
- 19 Feb 2026 — Online Assessment
- 16 April 2026 — Interviews
- 25 April 2026 — Result (Rejected)
Online Assessment
Total Questions: 2
- Q1: Monotonic Data Structure (Stack/Queue)
- Q2: Binary Search on Answer
Round 1 — DSA
Started with introduction, discussion about skills, interests, and tech stack.
Questions
- House Robber (variation)
- House Robber II (variation)
Solved both within ~45 minutes. Explained approach and did dry runs.
Round 2 — GenAI + DSA (Same Day)
Behavioral + AI Discussion
- How do you plan your day?
- What are your interests?
- How much do you trust AI?
- What do you use AI for?
- Have you solved problems using AI?
- Which AI tools do you use?
Also discussed my projects and tech stack.
DSA Questions
-
Aggressive Cows (variation)
-
Group Similar Strings
Problem: Given an array of strings (all anagrams), two strings are similar if they are identical or can be made equal by one swap. Return number of groups.
Example:
Input: ["tars","rats","arts","star"]
Output: 2
Approach
- Used DSU (Disjoint Set Union)
- Compared pairs to check if they differ in at most 2 positions
- Union similar strings
Was able to build the logic, but couldn’t complete coding within time.
Result
Rejected (25 April 2026)
Takeaways
- Implementation speed matters a lot
- Practice DSU problems thoroughly
- Be prepared for AI-related discussions
- Binary Search on Answer is very common
Hope this helps.
Interview Questions (1)
Group Similar Strings
Given an array of strings (all anagrams), two strings are similar if they are identical or can be made equal by one swap. Return the number of groups.
Example:
Input: ["tars","rats","arts","star"]
Output: 2