🚀 Amazon SDE 2 Interview Experience | Alexa Devices | 2.8 YOE | May/June 2026

I applied through a job portal and received the Online Assessment (OA) link after a couple of weeks. After clearing the OA, I was invited for a face-to‑to interview at the Bangalore office.

23rd May 2026 – Online

Round 1 – DSA

Questions:

1. Similar to Print Zig‑Zag Binary Tree
2. Variation of the Knapsack problem

This was a pretty easy round for me. I solved both questions within 30 minutes. For the second question, I started with a recursive solution and then optimized it using memoization. We also discussed the time and space complexity. The interviewer then asked two Leadership Principle questions, which I answered confidently.

Self Verdict: Strong Hire

Round 2 – LLD

Question:

Design Amazon Delivery Estimation Service

This was the toughest round for me. The interview started with two LP questions, which I messed up. After that, the interviewer gave me the problem statement and asked me to identify the functional and non‑functional requirements. I struggled significantly with this part and, even after receiving several hints, I was not able to convince the interviewer that I had a solid understanding of the problem. The interview ended after that. I knew this round had gone badly.

Self Verdict: No Hire

After this round, I was informed that the remaining rounds would be conducted virtually and that I should be prepared for them. At that point, I was convinced that I had probably not made it through.

However, a couple of weeks later, I received another email for an interview with the same team, scheduled for 13th June 2026. This time, I prepared extensively for system design.

13th June 2026 – Online

Round 3 – HLD

Question:

Design a Job Scheduler System with dependent jobs

The interviewer was an SDM with more than 20 years of experience. This was a completely new problem for me, but I started by discussing the requirements and constraints with the interviewer. That discussion helped make the problem much easier to approach. We mainly discussed:

• Kahn's Algorithm
• Message Queues
• Partitioning
• Database design
• Failure handling
• Retry mechanisms with exponential backoff
• ELK setup
• Horizontal scaling
• Handling dependent jobs

I was quite confident throughout this round. Towards the end, the interviewer asked me four Leadership Principle questions, which I answered well. At the end, I asked for feedback on my design. He said: "No design is good or bad in a design interview. You just need to meet the functional and non‑functional requirements. We did that, so it's a good design."

Self Verdict: Hire

Round 4 – Bar Raiser DSA

Question:

Variation of the Min Cost to Connect Ropes problem

The interviewer initially gave me a very long problem statement involving Amazon Alexa devices. The statement was quite vague, and the first part of the interview was challenging because I was trying to understand exactly what was being asked. There was also some wording around the "maximum of minimum", which initially made me think that the problem might involve binary search. The interviewer eventually gave me a hint, after which the problem became much simpler. I recognized the pattern and implemented the solution using a min‑heap fairly quickly. We discussed time complexity, space complexity, and a follow‑up to print the exact path of the devices that would be merged.

The interviewer then asked three to four Leadership Principle questions. Overall, I felt the round went well.

Self Verdict: Hire

Important: Try not to take hints during the interview if possible. The recruiter specifically mentioned that hints can be considered negatively during the debrief.

Round 5 – Additional LLD

Since the interviewers did not have enough evidence from my first LLD round, an additional LLD round was scheduled. Duration: ~1 hour 45 minutes.

Topics discussed:

1. Design something similar to a Netflix Subscription System
2. Migrate users from an old database to a new database while keeping the same API
3. Saga Pattern
4. Saga Steps, Context, and Orchestrator classes

This was a very exhausting round, especially because the in‑person interviews were quite long and this was already towards the end of the day. I did my best on the Netflix subscription design, but I struggled with the user migration problem and the Saga Orchestrator design.

Self Verdict: Lean Hire

Final Result

About a week later, on 19th June 2026, I received the rejection email. Looking back, I believe the main reason was my performance in the LLD rounds, especially the first LLD round. Although I performed well in DSA and HLD, I wasn't able to demonstrate the required depth and structure in LLD.

Round	Area	Verdict
Round 1	DSA	Strong Hire
Round 2	LLD	No Hire
Round 3	HLD	Hire
Round 4	Bar Raiser DSA	Hire
Round 5	Additional LLD	Lean Hire

Despite the rejection, the process taught me a lot about Amazon interviews and where I needed to improve. Keep preparing, keep improving, and keep coding!