Amazon SDE-2 Interview Experience - Selected
Summary
I interviewed for an SDE-2 position at Amazon, completed rounds covering DSA, system design, and low‑level design, and was selected.
Full Experience
Online Assessment
Difficulty: Medium
DSA: A medium‑difficulty problem centered around prefix and suffix sums. The challenge was not computing the arrays, but applying additional logic on top of them.
AI Repository: Navigate a real codebase using an AI assistant, identify a business‑logic bug causing failing tests, and manually implement the fix. AI could help explore the project but not generate the final patch.
Focus: DSA, debugging, code understanding, and effective AI usage.
Round 1 – DSA + Leadership Principles
Difficulty: Medium
Problem 1: Given histogram bar heights, find the largest rectangular area formed by consecutive bars. Expected optimal solution: monotonic stack.
Problem 2: Given a grid with positive and negative values that increase/decrease your power, find the minimum initial power needed to safely reach the bottom‑right cell without power dropping to zero.
Focus: Stacks, DP, optimization, complexity explanation, and LPs.
Round 2 – System Design + Leadership Principles
Difficulty: Hard
Question: Design an Attendance Management System for hourly employees. The interviewer intentionally gave almost no constraints and expected the candidate to gather requirements, define assumptions, design APIs, data model, event flow, scalability, consistency, failure handling, and observability.
Focus: Requirement clarification, proactive discussion, scalability, trade‑offs, and failure handling.
Round 3 – LLD + Leadership Principles
Difficulty: Medium
Question: Design a terminal‑based file search utility. It should support searching by attributes such as name, size, extension, etc., and allow complex queries combining filters using logical AND/OR. The focus was on an extensible object‑oriented design.
Focus: Clean OOP, extensibility, and Specification/Composite‑style design.
Bar Raiser
Difficulty: Medium
Problem 1: Given a valid time (HH:MM), find the next 'good time'. After a brute‑force solution, the discussion shifted toward a cleaner production‑quality implementation.
Problem 2: Find a common element present in every sorted row of a matrix. The interview emphasized progressing from brute force to an optimized approach and clearly communicating the reasoning.
Focus: Correctness, optimization, production‑quality code, and LPs.
Key Takeaways
- Leadership Principles were discussed in almost every round.
- Explain your thought process clearly.
- Start with a correct solution, then optimize.
- Clarify requirements before system design.
- Discuss trade‑offs, failures, scalability, and observability.
- Amazon evaluates problem solving, communication, and production thinking — not just coding.
Hope this helps anyone preparing for Amazon SDE‑2 interviews.
Comp - https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/8448320/amazon-sde-2-l5-hyderabad-3-yoe-compensa-v5id/
Interview Questions (6)
Largest Rectangle in Histogram
Given an array of bar heights representing a histogram, find the largest rectangular area that can be formed by consecutive bars. The optimal solution uses a monotonic stack to achieve O(n) time.
Minimum Initial Power to Reach Bottom‑Right
Given a grid where each cell contains a positive or negative value that changes your power, determine the minimum initial power required so that you can move from the top‑left to the bottom‑right cell without your power ever dropping to zero.
Design Attendance Management System
Design an attendance management system for hourly employees. Gather requirements, define assumptions, design APIs, data model, event flow, and address scalability, consistency, failure handling, and observability.
Design Terminal‑based File Search Utility
Create a command‑line utility that searches files based on attributes such as name, size, extension, etc., and supports complex queries combining filters with logical AND/OR. Emphasize an extensible object‑oriented architecture.
Next Good Time
Given a valid time in HH:MM format, find the next time that satisfies a specific “good time” condition (as defined by the interview). Initial brute‑force approach was discussed, followed by a more efficient production‑quality solution.
Find Common Element in All Sorted Rows
Given a matrix where each row is sorted, find an element that appears in every row. Move from a brute‑force method to an optimized approach while explaining the reasoning.