Amazon SDE 2 Interview

Recently, I had the opportunity to interview with Amazon for an SDE-2 position. My background is Software Engineer 2 with 4 years of experience at a product-based company. The process started with an online assessment on HackerRank, which included 2 coding questions and some behavioral questions. I passed both coding questions with 15/15 test cases. After a delay due to scheduling conflicts, I eventually moved forward with the virtual onsite rounds.

The interview process consisted of four rounds. The first round was with a Senior SDE, where I faced two medium DSA problems. The first was a graph reachability problem, and the second was a modified unique path with obstacles problem. I discussed the approaches and time/space complexities in depth. The round also included two Leadership Principles (LP) questions.

In the second round, another Senior SDE asked two medium DSA problems. The first was about calculating the difference between the sum of odd and even levels in a binary tree, which I solved in 15 minutes. The second was a sorted but rotated array problem to find the minimum element, which I also solved quickly. This round included three LP questions.

The third round was with an SDM, who asked a hard HLD problem related to a subscription service. There were no LP questions in this round.

The final round was with a Principle Engineer, Bar Raiser, who asked a medium LLD problem about implementing a distributed monitoring system for server health. This round also included 2-3 LP questions, which took about 30 minutes to complete. Overall, the LPs were a significant focus, with each round dedicating at least 20 minutes to them.

One week after the interviews, the recruiter called to inform me that I had been selected for the SDE-2 position. I received the offer letter the following week.