Amazon | SDE 2 | Selected | Aug 2026 | BLR

Heyaaa!

Giving Back to the Community

First of all, thanks a lot to everyone in this community. I've learned a lot from reading other people's interview experiences, so hopefully this helps someone else too.

I applied to all the open SDE II roles. Since one account has a limit on active applications, I used two.

Round 0 — OA

The OA had an AI-related repository/code section and 1 DSA question (don't remember).

Round 1 — DSA

The interviewer was an SDE III. We started with 2 LP questions: (Learn & Be Curious) and (Ownership). (~10 mins)

He then started with a custom coding problem, which was basically a BFS problem. He kept adding complexity to it, and eventually it became a Multi-Source BFS problem. I solved it.

There was one edge case I knew I hadn't covered, but there were only ~15 minutes left and the interviewer seemed fine with the solution, so I decided not to bring it up. And then he said, "That's it. Do you have any questions?" At this point, I was expecting another question.

How can he miss the edge case?

Anyway, I did this. Please don't do this. If you know there's an edge case, just mention it.

Feedback from HR: Positive

Round 2 — LLD

The problem was somewhat similar to an Amazon Locker, but basically the reverse. Instead of the Amazon delivery person picking up a return package from the customer, the customer books a slot at the nearest drop store and physically goes there to drop the package.

I took some time initially to clarify the requirements and then started writing the code. In the middle of it, the interviewer suddenly went in another direction: "How will you find the nearest drop store from the customer's location?"

I said I'd use the concept of geosharding. That's basically the only thing I could come up with because, well... I've never done HLD before. He wanted to go deeper into it and even gave me a hint: "Think about how Uber does this." Unfortunately, I didn't know how Uber does it.

So I basically pointed my cursor towards the clock and indirectly communicated: "Bro, this is LLD, not HLD. Let's finish the LLD first."

I ended up spending around 35 minutes writing the code, and as expected, there wasn't really much time left to discuss anything else. This was also the only round where I wasn't able to answer something.

Then came the LP questions: (Dive Deep) and (Invent and Simplify).

Feedback from HR: I Didn't ask.

Round 3 — Bar Raiser

Started with around 10 minutes of LP questions. (Customer Obsession & Deliver Results)

The coding problem was similar to Find the Safest Path in a Grid (https://leetcode.com/problems/find-the-safest-path-in-a-grid/). LeetCode calls it Medium. No. It's Hard.

I had never solved it before, so I obviously didn't know the intended solution. I started with a very, very naive approach, then optimized it twice while discussing the time and space complexity at each step. Eventually, I came up with the final solution: Multi-Source BFS + DFS on Binary Search.

The interviewer still wanted me to optimize it further. But eventually I solved it and wrote the code.

One tip from this round: If you're in a similar situation where you don't immediately know the optimal solution, start writing code early. I ended up with only around 15 minutes to write ~65 lines of code and explain them. Not recommended.

Feedback from HR: Didn't ask because I knew I raised the bar.

Round 4 — System Design

This round was taken by the HM, and she was cool. Started with LP questions: (Earn Trust) and (Have Backbone & Disagree and Commit).

She gave me a custom problem, which I believe was related to something the team was actually working on. The problem was somewhat similar to syncing configurations across different devices. She asked several design-related questions, and I was able to answer all of them.

This was probably my smoothest round.

Feedback from HR: Didn't ask because I knew I killed it.

Final Verdict

Selected

Bonus — How I Prepared

DSA: I completed Striver's entire sheet plus around 200 additional questions that I collected from LeetCode posts and GitHub repositories.

LLD: I had watched one YouTube playlist on LLD a long time ago. For the actual preparation, I also used AI to dry-run LLD problems and discuss different approaches. Solved around 26+ LLD problems.

HLD: I completed the entire Hello Interview system design playlist and watched a few videos from the Deep Dive playlist. Honestly, I think this is more than enough to get started. I also solved a few additional design problems from other YouTube videos. I ended up watching the Hello Interview playlist 3 times because my system design round got rescheduled three times.

Overall, the preparation took around 1.5 months. During this period, I was completely focused on interview preparation since I was on my notice period. Thankfully, my manager was extremely supportive and used to help me with my Jiras while I was preparing.

Really grateful to have this kind of manager.

That's pretty much it. Hope this helps someone preparing for Amazon SDE II.

All the best!