Amazon SDE Interview Experience

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SDE InullOffer
August 21, 202513 reads

Summary

Had a successful SDE interview at Amazon with multiple rounds including leadership principles, coding challenges, system design, and behavioral questions. The interview covered a range of topics from algorithmic problems to system design, with a focus on problem-solving and understanding of core concepts.

Full Experience

My Amazon SDE interview experience started with an in-depth discussion of Amazon's leadership principles. I prepared examples from my campus experience to answer questions about customer obsession, ownership, and deep research. The interviewer then moved on to two coding questions. The first was about determining the maximum number of meeting rooms required, which I solved using a greedy algorithm. The second was a variant of the House Rob, where I used binary search within a specific range and verified the solution by iterating through the array.

In the second round, I faced two more coding challenges: the Celebrity Search Problem and the Sum of Distances in a Tree Problem. I solved the Celebrity Search using the definition of a celebrity, and for the Sum of Distances problem, I used DFS to calculate counts and distances. The third round was a system design challenge where I designed the BookMyShow system using OOP principles. The final round included leadership principles and behavioral questions, followed by a low-level design question on designing a car rental system.

Interview Questions (6)

Q1
Maximum Number of Meeting Rooms Required
Data Structures & AlgorithmsMedium

Determine the maximum number of meeting rooms required given a list of meeting intervals.

Q2
Variant of the House Robber Problem
Data Structures & AlgorithmsHard

Solve a variant of the House Robber problem where you need to find the smallest value that meets certain conditions using binary search within a specific range.

Q3
Celebrity Search Problem
Data Structures & AlgorithmsMedium

Identify a celebrity in a list of people where everyone else knows the celebrity, but the celebrity does not know anyone else.

Q4
Sum of Distances in a Tree Problem
Data Structures & AlgorithmsHard

Calculate the sum of distances from all nodes to every other node in a tree structure.

Q5
Design the BookMyShow System
System DesignHard

Design a system for booking seats in a theater, handling scenarios where multiple users might try to select the same seat.

Q6
Car Rental System Design
System DesignHard

Design a car rental system, focusing on the process of delivering a reserved vehicle to a customer.

Preparation Tips

I prepared by practicing common algorithmic problems, especially those related to greedy algorithms and dynamic programming. I also reviewed system design concepts and practiced behavioral questions related to leadership principles. I made sure to understand the core principles of Amazon's culture and how to apply them in project scenarios.

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