Amazon SDE-2 interview experience

🔹 Online Assesment– DSA + Leadership Principles Don't remember the questions as had given a month prior to onsite rounds.

Verdict- Cleared

Onsite rounds: 🔹 Round 1 – DSA + Leadership Principles Two interviewers were present. First 35 minutes: Focused on Leadership Principles (behavioral questions). Then they mentioned that we will increase our interview by 10–15 minutes.

After 35 mins: Focused on solving a Hard-level DSA problem to get top 3 searches starting with a given prefix. I gave a trie-based solution within 30 seconds but the interviewer wanted an optimized one only, so was kind of giving hint that we don't need to go to leaf node. My solution: of getting list of all words starting with given prefix and then return the top 3 based on the frequencies that we would initially store in hashmap. But he accepted my solution after 1 hour 10 mins and asked me to code whole tries and my approach in 5mins. I was asked to optimise it, and did it by storing top 3 at every node. And had coded the main logic function, but it was not possible to code whole thing. But I felt he accepted my solution only bcz time was up, he was not satisfied and I felt from starting he had only one solution in mind that he wanted, so was not at all accepting other solution. And he wanted that 2-3 questions should have been completed in the time frame. I felt that once he would have accepted my initial solution, I would have optimised it within 10mins, but he told to dry run my initial approach from start to end 3-4 times and had asked many cross questions, so I felt I had hard luck facing that kind of interviewer. And explaining it to two interviewers were also another headache as each interviewer had different query.

Self Verdict: Lean Hire

🔹 Round 2 – Low Level Design Was asked to design a Courier Service by a Senior SDE. The discussion was thorough, with multiple follow-up questions around data models, class structures, extensibility, and edge cases. I answered all cross questions confidently, and the flow of the discussion was smooth and structured.

Self Verdict: Strong Hire

Final Outcome: Despite a great LLD round, I was rejected due to Round 1 performance.I asked the recruiter to conduct my System Design and Bar raiser round and then make a decision, but the recruiter mentioned that it is not possible.