Amazon SDE 2 (L5) | Bangalore | Interview Experience
Summary
I completed a 5‑round interview process for an SDE 2 Backend role at Amazon in Bangalore, clearing all rounds including DSA, system design, and a Bar Raiser.
Full Experience
I recently went through the interview process at Amazon for a SDE 2 Backend role and wanted to share my experience. There were 5 rounds in total — including DSA, system design (HLD + LLD), and a Bar Raiser round. Hope this helps others preparing for similar roles!
1) Round 1 — DSA + Leadership Principles
Started with two LP questions followed by one DSA problem.
LP Questions
Standard behavioral questions focused on ownership and delivering results. Prepare specific STAR-format stories from your past experience.
DSA: Course Schedule II
https://leetcode.com/problems/course-schedule-ii/
2) Round 2 — DSA + Leadership Principles
Two LP questions followed by two DSA problems.
DSA 1: Merge Intervals
https://leetcode.com/problems/merge-intervals/
DSA 2: Product of Array Except Self
https://leetcode.com/problems/product-of-array-except-self/
3) Round 3 — System Design HLD + Leadership Principle
One high-level design problem followed by one LP question.
Design: Google Docs (Collaborative Document Editing)
Key areas discussed:
- Real-time collaboration
- Operational Transformation (OT) vs CRDTs for conflict resolution
- WebSocket connections for low-latency sync
- Storage and versioning
- Delta-based storage for document history
- Snapshot + diff strategy for efficient retrieval
- Scalability — sharding by document ID, regional replication
- Presence indicators (who's editing what, cursor positions)
- Permissions and access control model
4) Round 4 — System Design LLD + Leadership Principles
One low-level design problem followed by two LP questions.
Design: Uber (Ride-Hailing System)
Key areas discussed:
- Class design — Rider, Driver, Trip, Payment, Location entities
- Trip state machine: requested → accepted → in_progress → completed / cancelled
- Driver matching algorithm — geospatial indexing (quadtree / geohash)
- Surge pricing logic and fare calculation service
- Payment service integration — idempotency, retries, failure handling
- API design — REST endpoints for booking, tracking, and cancellation
5) Round 5 — Bar Raiser (BR) Round
Two DSA problems and one LP question. This round had a higher bar — the interviewer dug deeper into thought process and trade-offs.
DSA 1: Maximum Sum BST in Binary Tree
https://leetcode.com/problems/maximum-sum-bst-in-binary-tree/
DSA 2: Reorganize String
https://leetcode.com/problems/reorganize-string/
# Please up-vote, to motivate me to upload my other interview experiences :)
Interview Questions (7)
Course Schedule II
Given the total number of courses and a list of prerequisite pairs, return a possible order in which you can finish all courses. If it is impossible to finish all courses, return an empty array.
Merge Intervals
Given an array of intervals where intervals[i] = [start_i, end_i], merge all overlapping intervals, and return an array of the non-overlapping intervals that cover all the intervals in the input.
Product of Array Except Self
Given an integer array nums, return an array answer such that answer[i] is equal to the product of all the elements of nums except nums[i]. The solution must run in O(n) time and without using division.
Maximum Sum BST in Binary Tree
Given a binary tree, find the maximum sum of values of all nodes of any subtree that is a valid Binary Search Tree (BST). Return the maximum sum.
Reorganize String
Given a string S, rearrange the characters of S so that any two adjacent characters are not the same. Return any possible rearrangement of S, or an empty string if not possible.
Design Google Docs (Collaborative Document Editing)
Design a system that allows multiple users to edit a document concurrently with real‑time collaboration. Discuss conflict resolution (OT vs CRDT), communication (WebSocket), storage (delta‑based, snapshots), scalability (sharding, replication), presence indicators, and permission models.
Design Uber Ride‑Hailing System
Design an end‑to‑end ride‑hailing platform. Cover class design for Rider, Driver, Trip, Payment, Location, the trip state machine, driver matching using geospatial indexing, surge pricing, payment reliability, and REST API endpoints for booking, tracking, and cancellation.
Preparation Tips
Prepare specific STAR‑format stories for leadership principle questions, focusing on ownership and delivering results. Review common DSA problems (graph, interval, array, BST) and practice coding them without using external resources. Study system design fundamentals, especially high‑level and low‑level design topics such as real‑time collaboration, sharding, state machines, and geospatial indexing.