Amazon | (SD2) | Seattle | September [Reject]
Summary
I interviewed for an SD2 role at Amazon in Seattle and was rejected. The process involved a technical phone screen and a 5-round onsite interview, with a heavy emphasis on Leadership Principles and some LeetCode-style coding questions.
Full Experience
I recently interviewed at Amazon for an SD2 position in Seattle. The interview process consisted of a technical phone screen, followed by a demanding five-round onsite interview. Unfortunately, I was rejected.
My technical phone screen lasted about an hour. It involved two questions focused on Amazon's Leadership Principles, along with a coding problem that was similar to LeetCode's Minimum Knight Moves.
The onsite interview was structured into five separate rounds:
- This round involved discussions on Amazon's Leadership Principles and a System Design problem.
- Another round focused on LPs, along with a simplified version of LeetCode's K Closest Points to Origin.
- This round was purely dedicated to Amazon's Leadership Principles.
- Again, LPs were discussed, followed by some easier technical questions that allowed for multiple solution approaches and a discussion of tradeoffs.
- The final round covered LPs and the Roman to Integer problem, which also included follow-up questions.
Interview Questions (3)
Minimum Knight Moves
During my technical phone screen, I was given a coding question similar to 'Minimum Knight Moves' on LeetCode. The problem typically asks for the minimum number of steps a knight needs to take to reach a target square on a chessboard from a starting square.
K Closest Points to Origin
In one of the onsite rounds, I was asked a simplified version of the 'K Closest Points to Origin' problem. This problem generally involves finding the K points closest to the origin (0,0) from a given list of points in a 2D plane.
Roman to Integer
In the final onsite round, I encountered the 'Roman to Integer' problem, where I had to convert a Roman numeral string into its integer equivalent. There were also follow-up questions related to this problem.
Preparation Tips
Based on my experience, my advice would be to heavily focus on Amazon's Leadership Principles questions. From what I gathered, each round centered significantly on LPs, giving technical questions a secondary role. Additionally, practicing LeetCode-style coding problems is beneficial, keeping in mind that the coding portion typically lasted about 20 minutes per round.