Amazon SDE-1 (L4) Interview Experience | 2025 Fresher [Offer]

I applied for the SDE 1 role and received the Online Assessment (OA) test the next day. The OA consisted of four parts:

• Part 1: Debugging Round (70 mins) - Two DSA-based coding questions.
• Part 2: Work Style Simulation (Untimed) - Three scenario-based mail simulation questions, where I had to assess replies based on Amazon's Leadership Principles.
• Part 3: Behavioral Questions P1 (Untimed) - MCQ format behavioral questions, also to be answered using Leadership Principles.
• Part 4: Behavioral Questions P2 (Untimed) - More like/Most like me format behavioral questions, again adhering to LPs.

After clearing the OA, I proceeded to the interview rounds.

Round 1

This round started with my introduction: name, college, tech stack, and internship experience. The interviewer asked about one of my projects and my contributions, noting we would discuss it further later. Then, it switched to DSA.

1. I was given a DSA problem disguised in a story, which was to find the Longest subarray with unique characters.
2. The second DSA problem was Word Ladder.

For both questions, I had to provide a proper approach first, then code it, and discuss its time and space complexity. I also needed to dry run each solution, provide the optimal solution, and discuss test cases and edge cases. After the DSA, we switched back to discussing my prior experience. I was asked about a task where I learned something new and a task I did using AWS services. I then asked about the tech stack, project scope, qualities looked for in a candidate, and the overall SDE-1 hiring process.

Round 2

This round began with my introduction, followed by 20 minutes dedicated to Leadership Principles. I was asked about:

1. A time where I struggled to produce an output.
2. When I went beyond my work.
3. A major decision I took.

The remaining 40 minutes focused on DSA and design. I received a question based on topological sort, and I needed to solve it using a class-based approach, writing methods, and incorporating exception handling with try-catch blocks.

Bar Raiser Round

This round started directly with greetings, no introduction. The interviewer immediately jumped into Leadership Principles:

1. LP1: Tell me about a time when you received critical feedback, and explain my project once.
2. LP2: A time when I was unable to deliver results.
3. LP3: A time when I solved a difficult problem.
4. LP4: A deep dive into some other task of mine.

The interviewer then asked about various technical concepts I had mentioned in my work experiences:

• The API used to copy objects in S3.
• Key, object, and bucket in S3.
• S3 versus a NoSQL database.
• What a NoSQL database is.
• Explaining sharding, indexing in NoSQL, and caching.
• What Docker, containerization, etc. are.
• What EC2, virtual machines are, and why they are used.
• Explaining REST APIs.

I then asked questions about his project, how to master system design, the work culture and his daily schedule at Amazon, and finally, how microservices interact within Amazon. The meeting concluded in 50 minutes. I received the offer 10 days later.