Amazon SDE-1 [Offer] | Interview Experience

Hi Community, I recently got the Opportunity to Interview at Amazon for SDE-1 position.

Status: Got the offer.

Grad: 2023, Tier 1 Experience: 1Y8M Company: Service Based MNC

Total Timeline (OA to Offer): 3.5 Months

I got the opportunity to apply for SDE-1 role at Amazon through LinkedIn, reaching out to a Leadership and got the OA.

Online Assesment (OA)

📅 27th March 2025

2 DSA questions + Behavioral part

Update: Got the update within 2 days that I have cleared and my rounds will get scheduled.

Round 1

📅 8th April 2025

My scheduled interviewer didn’t join, and the person who did told me, “You’ll get another invite.” And then… silence. 14 days passed before I finally got a call.

📅 24th April 2025

I finally got my interview—this time with two SDE-1s. They asked me two DSA questions:

1. Heaters - [Medium]
2. Maximum width of Binary Tree - [Easy]

For the first question, I used multisource BFS at first, but It took me 30 mins to explain the working of this to the interviewer as the straight solution is through Binary Search. Later to improve TC, I also gave TC through Binary Search but didn't code this approach.

For the 2nd question, it was standard Leetcode - clean and smooth.

Update: Got a mail the next day that I have cleared the round and am still in the loop. 🎉

Round 2

📅 14th May 2025

This round finally happened 20 days after R1 and honestly, the wait was the most frustrating part of the process. No updates, no recruiter contact, just uncertainty.

I got 2 interviewers in this round as well, both were SDE-2 and gave me 2 LC Hards in this round followed by 2 standard LPs, this round was very mixed in my opinion.

1. Word Ladder - [Hard]
2. Count Beautiful Splits in the Array - [Medium acc. to LC]

I have prepared alot for these, So I was able to code the most optimal solution for the first question + was able to give some approach for the Second one, but my code was not 100% correct and I even said this in the interview that I need more time to solve this.

What are your views on the difficulty of the second question. It uses Rolling Hash + Z function + DP. I dont know what was expected out of me.

I gave a Brute + DP approach but not sure of that as well.

Leadership Questions:

• Time you went above and beyond your expectations
• A time you took on something significant outside your responsibility

Update: After this round, I thought I was rejected because I couldn’t solve one of the questions. I lost all hope no emails, no calls, no updates.

35 days passed in complete silence. Out of desperation, I reached out to someone at Amazon on LinkedIn, asking if they could help me get an update from my recruiter.

And that very same day… I finally got the update— I had cleared Round 2! 🎉

That person was truly a blessing for me. 🙏

Round 3 - Bar Raiser

This round got scheduled 2 days after my update at Day 40th exactly

📅 25th June 2025

My interviewer was a 12 year Amazon veteran. Honestly, we didn’t quite connect well during the round it felt a bit formal and distant.

The round started with my Introduction and he explained me what will the flow be like and told me he would be asking me 1 DSA and multiple LPs.

DSA

• The question was pretty straight forward similar to Unique Paths, where we have been given a Grid, Start (X,Y) and End (X, Y). When the robot starts at the starting point we need to find what is the maximum points he can collect in the Grid to reach the End Point.
• Condition: The robot is only allowed to move in Right / Down direction.

This was a very weird Interview as I have a habit of explaining everything on the go as I am writing, but he told me to speak only when I am done with the full code.

I started with simple Recursive brute force, then moved on to Memoization and explaining TC/SC for both approaches. He began with dry running the code himself and didnt want me to explain anything.

Later we moved to LPs. Some questions are below

• Tell me something that you are not good at
• How would you learn a new Technology
• Most Challenging Project you have ever worked on

This round ended early in 40 mins as the Interviewer was done with the questions and I solved the DSA question in 15-20 mins.

2 days after my interview, I received a rejection email from AUTA saying they were not moving forward with my candidature. I was heartbroken, shattered and 100 other words to say WTF. I couldn’t think of a single reason for the rejection because I had done everything I possibly could. But sometimes, you just have to live with the uncertainties.

After the weekend, on Monday, my recruiter called to ask about my location preferences but still didn’t tell me the result. She said she would update me later. Then, two days later, on Wednesday…

I got the OFFEERRRRRRR! 🎉

This journey had its fair share of ups and downs, but that one email made everything worth it.

Who could have thought I would get an offer after that email?

The quote I stand by through this entire journey is: “It’s not over until it’s over.”

Believe in yourself, stay patient, and trust the process you never know when things will turn around.