Amazon SDE - 1 OA Fresher

Aplication

I have filled the application from their website. I saw that post on LinkedIn, it was for 2025 grad (India). Software Dev Engineer - 3012623

Filled application on 30th June, received OA on the same day with 7 days time limit (Prevoiusly I have filled different applications with referral but not recieved OA, so time matters). Received hiring intrest form and time was to fill that before July 9th , 12:00 PM along with Important Note: If you have attended Amazon SDE-1 interviews in the last six months, you will not be eligible due to the cooling-off period. Here is an overview of the interview process, should you be shortlisted for the next steps, to help you with your preparation.

Interview Rounds: You can expect up to three interview rounds, including two technical assessments and a final Bar Raiser round. Assessment Areas: The interviews will focus on Data Structures & Algorithms, Logical and Maintainable Coding, Problem-Solving, Coding Proficiency, Amazon Leadership Principles and Behavioral Questions.

After filling the hiring intrest form I received the date of the interview on 9th July from loopScheduler, not from HR and didn't receive any calls (some people got call from international number regarding thier interview), the first interview was scheduled for 11th July.

OA

The OA consisted 2 questions and 70 minutes to solve that.

First question

You are given book volumes and you can only buy the volumes if by buying all volumes till now you get all conseutive volumnes else you dont but it and for that day print -1

Example:

Volumes = [1,4,3,2,6,5]

Day 1 buy volume 1 so => [1] Day 2 you can't buy so => [-1] Day 3 you can't buy so => [-1] Day 4 you buy remaning so => [2,3,4] Day 5 you can't buy so => [-1] Day 6 you buy remaning so => [5,6]

I have encountered similar problem so was able to solve it using visited array and two pointer under 5 minutes.

Second question

You are given even length binary string, now you can flips bits and you want to make every consecutive same segement even, example: for string 1011 you can flip it to make 0011 or 0000 or 1111, etc, but all segment should be of even length like "00". Now among all swap you want to find minimum flips needed.

After finding minimum flips you have to find the minimum number of segements which you can achieve after fliping minimum number of times.

Example:

If we can make each segement even with 3 flips which is minimum then we want to find the minimum number of segements, for string "0011110000" segement is 3

Initally used greedy, but only 10 test case passed out of 15 so used dp to solve it. For each index I needed to know the last bit parity, segement size (even/odd) so dp[N][2][2]. And it passed all the test cases. It took me 40 minute to solve both problem

For both problem N <= 1e5

After the coding assessment there was 3 untimed section for working scenario inside a company, and decison needed for a specific condition. I have dedicated 2 hour thinking about best choices focusing on Amazon LeaderShip Principle

Interview

Time limit was 1 hour, I had to explain from brute to optimal, and this was the first technical assessment after OA:

We introduced ourself, the first question was given in the shared document and screen was shared using Amazon Chime application.

The first question was Maximum in K Size Window, it was easy I have explained from brute force to optimal, but I have dry run the code and approach multiple times so it took more time, initially I was expecting one DSA question since other has got only 1 DSA question.

Now time was 15 minutes and received another problem, Given DAG, each edge has {frequency, bandwidth} now I need to go from 0 to n - 1 goal was to reach n - 1 with minumum frequency and sum of bandwidth <= B it was similar to Cheapest Flight With In K Stops in Leetcode, initially I told the approach that I would use Dijkstra and 2D matrix with feild as Node, Bandwidth, but due to panic I forgot to ask the constraint and the interviewer said what if bandwidth was huge like 1e9, and the interviewer jumps to leadeship principle and told me it was the most important part of the interview.

The LP question was How did you handle a situation where you have less data about the project?, for this I used STAR format (Situation, Task, Action, Result) I told that I have schedule a meeting with product owner to gather the current data about the project, read documentation and have meeting with other engineers who have worked on similar product and continously communicate with the team, QA and share a common documentation with them to know what is the customer expectation, and will the project need any new feature or not and test the peoject on the epected feature for customer and this transparent communication allow me to deliver result 20% ahead of expected time. Here I focused on Bias-for-Action, Customer-Obsession

Before ending the interview I have asked what is your role and impact on the current project?. The project was the same which the interviewer told me during the introduction.

Rejection

On 25th July I have received the rejected mail form APAC SP IND Tech which is 13 days after the interview. So if you have filled many appication and not recieved OA or interview details with in 10 day after OA its better to go for other openings, and receiving just hiring intrest form does not really help, I have received hiring form during my 7th semester but not got any OA or HR mail.

My Details:

Graduated this June but still unemployed, have done SDE internship at top MnC but due to different buisness goal my PPO offer was revoked. Have reached to HR round of some companies like Browser Stack, PaloAlto but due to different Job(SDET) role, I was not able to proceed. And for some startups, they needed that I have to work on my own laptop and relocation was not flexible for me so I was not able to choose those also.

I have done 1300+ problem on leetcode and 500+ on codeforces, and rating of Knight and Pupil respectively. Have system design knowledge (LLD + HLD + System Design Patterns), have good underatnding of L7 protocols, OS, DBMS, OOPS.

My tech stack include: MERN Stack + SQL, build fullstack apps and have understanding of Sockets, Jenkins (CI/CD), TypeScript, AWS(EC2), Unit test, Cypress (E2E test).

Previously I was not confident about my knowledge so I have not filled any applications, but I cannot stay same and currently I really need a stable job awhere I can show my skills.

Request

If any of you have such opportunity in your company or knows about any role related to SDE/FullStack please share the JobId or your linkedIn, it would really help me.