Amazon | SDE2 | Hyderabad | OCT 2020 [REJECT]

My interview process for the SDE2 role at Amazon started in March 2020 when I received an invitation for an Online Assessment (OA). I completed the OA, but after that, there was a complete silence, which led me to believe I might not have cleared it.

However, in July 2020, I received a call from an Amazon recruiter. We had a good discussion, and it turned out the March OA results hadn't been announced for some reason. I was then invited for the first interview round, the Phone Screen.

Round 0 - Phone Screen

This round covered a mix of System Design and Data Structures & Algorithms. I was asked to propose a solution for a logger method handling 1000 transactions/second, implement deletion of a leaf node in a BST, and convert a BST to a Doubly Linked List. We also had some Leadership Principles (LP) questions.

Following this, there was another period of silence, and I again assumed I hadn't cleared the round. To my surprise, I received a call from the recruiter informing me that I had indeed cleared the phone screen and they wished to proceed further.

Round 1 - System Design + LP

This round took me by surprise as I was hoping for High-Level System Design questions, for which I had prepared extensively. Instead, the focus was on Object-Oriented Design, specifically designing a Vending Machine and providing its UML class diagram. I kept discussing the design with the interviewer and explaining my process. There were also LP questions regarding disagreements with peers and risks I had taken.

Round 2 - Coding round

This was a coding round where I was presented with the "Zombie problem." It involved a matrix of 0s and 1s, and I needed to determine the time it would take to convert all humans (0s) to zombies (1s). It took me some time to fully understand the problem, but I kept discussing the solution with the interviewer and then successfully coded the complete solution.

Round 3 - Coding round

I don't remember the exact question for the first problem, but it was related to 'N balls with W weight.' For the second problem, it was "Find the president problem." I had discussions with the interviewer for both problems. For the first one, I provided a solution, and then we moved on to discuss optimizations. For the second problem, we only had time for a discussion.

Round 4 - System Design + LP

Again, I was expecting High-Level Design questions, but the round focused on Object-Oriented Design. I was asked to design a Chess class diagram using UML. This was unexpected given my preparation focus. We also discussed some Leadership Principles.

After some time, I received an email informing me that they had decided not to move forward with my application at that time. I hope my experience helps others in their preparation.