Amazon SDE2 Interview Experience | AUG 26 | BLR | 3.3 YOE

Amazon SDE2 Interview Experience | AUG 26 | BLR | 3.3 YOE

Sharing my Amazon SDE2 interview experience since I found similar interview experiences extremely useful while preparing.

Experience: 3.3 years Current role: SDE2 (for ~1.5 years) Role: SDE2 Location: Bangalore

Overall Process

The process had:

1. Online Assessment
2. Phone Screen
3. Loop Round 1 - HLD + LPs
4. Loop Round 2 - DSA + LPs
5. Loop Round 3 - LLD/HM + LPs
6. Bar Raiser - DSA + LPs

Unfortunately, there was some confusion around my HLD/LLD round, which I’ll explain below.

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1. Online Assessment - June 11

The OA had two parts:

DSA

One DSA problem based on Binary Search was asked.

It wasn't particularly difficult, but required identifying the right binary-search-on-answer type of approach.

Python/Django Debugging

The second part was a Python-Django project.

I was given an existing Django project and had to identify and fix bugs.

An AI coding assistant was also provided during the assessment.

However, I didn't find the AI assistant particularly useful. It was specifically designed not to directly reveal the actual bug or provide the exact fix, so most of the debugging still had to be done manually.

I completed the assessment and waited for the result.

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2. Phone Screen - August 17

I received a call around August 15 saying that I had cleared the OA, and the phone screen was scheduled for August 17.

The interview was around 60 minutes.

I was asked 2 DSA questions.

Problem 1

Count Stepping Numbers in Range

Solved it using BFS. Interviewer was convinced with the approach. He also asked a follow up as well.

Problem 2

A standard binary-search problem based on:

Capacity To Ship Packages Within D Days

I was able to solve both problems within the first ~45 minutes.

The remaining ~15 minutes were focused on Amazon Leadership Principles.

LP asked: Bias for Action

The round went well.

Two days later, I received the call that I had cleared the phone screen and would have four more loop rounds.

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3. Loop Round 1 - HLD/LLD Confusion - August 21

This was probably the most unusual part of my interview experience.

HR had scheduled this round as an LLD + DSA round.

However, when the interview started, the interviewer began asking me a System Design/HLD question.

The question was:

Design an Inventory Management System for Amazon

Initially, I assumed we were doing LLD, so I started approaching the problem accordingly.

After some time, I realized that the interviewer was actually expecting HLD.

At that point, I wasn't mentally prepared for an HLD discussion in that round, and I struggled to answer some of the questions properly.

The interviewer went quite deep into concurrency-related scenarios, for example:

There is only one unit of a product left in inventory and two users place an order simultaneously. How would you prevent both orders from succeeding?

We discussed things around:

• Race conditions
• Concurrency
• Inventory consistency
• Concurrent updates
• Preventing overselling
• Locking/transaction approaches

The feedback from this round was neutral.

Later, HR told me that she had accidentally communicated the round to the interviewer as a System Design round instead of LLD.

I requested another opportunity to take the intended LLD round, but HR declined to schedule another round.

LP asked: Earn Trust

This was definitely the round I felt I could have performed much better in if I had known beforehand that it was going to be HLD.

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4. Loop Round 2 - DSA - August 21

The next round was scheduled for 1 hour, but ended up taking around 1 hour 40 minutes.

I was asked three DSA problems.

Problem 1

Container With Most Water

Solved using the standard two-pointer approach.

Problem 2 - Follow-up

Trapping Rain Water

This was a follow-up to the previous problem.

We discussed the intuition and approach in detail.

Problem 3

Cheapest Flights Within K Stops

This was a graph/BFS-based minimum-weight problem.

I was able to solve all three problems.

This round went very well. There was also a good discussion around my projects, which helped during the Leadership Principles portion.

LPs asked:

• Bias for Action
• Dive Deep

The feedback from this round was very positive.

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5. Loop Round 3 - HM + LLD - August 26

The next round was scheduled as the Hiring Manager round.

Since the HLD round had already happened, HR scheduled this one as LLD.

The interviewer was a very senior manager.

The first ~15 minutes were focused on Leadership Principles.

LP: Deliver Results

We discussed several examples from my previous projects and experience.

Then came the design question:

Design a Rate Limiter

I was quite well prepared for this topic, so the discussion went very well.

We discussed multiple approaches/algorithms for rate limiting, including:

• Fixed Window
• Sliding Window
• Token Bucket
• Distributed rate limiting
• Redis
• Locks/concurrency
• Handling rate limiting across multiple application instances
• Trade-offs between different approaches

The interviewer also asked follow-up questions around distributed systems and consistency.

Overall, I felt this was one of my strongest rounds.

The feedback from the HM was positive.

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6. Bar Raiser - August 31

The final round was the Bar Raiser round.

The interviewer was a senior engineer.

The DSA problem was a fairly difficult Knapsack-style problem.

I initially approached it using a Greedy strategy.

The interviewer challenged the approach and gave me some hints.

After discussing it further, we eventually concluded that the problem required a Knapsack/DP-based approach.

Unfortunately, figuring this out consumed a lot of my interview time.

I wasn't able to complete the entire code within the available time.

The final ~15 minutes were focused on Leadership Principles:

• Customer Obsession
• Ownership

I felt that I had messed up this round, especially because I couldn't complete the coding portion.

The feedback was negative.

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Final Result

A few days later, HR called me with the result.

The feedback was essentially:

• Phone Screen - Positive
• DSA Loop - Very Positive
• HM/LLD - Positive
• HLD - Neutral
• Bar Raiser - Negative

HR told me that because of the Bar Raiser and HLD rounds, the interviewers were not convinced that I was ready for the SDE2 level.

Amazon therefore offered me an SDE1 position instead of SDE2.

I asked if I could take another HLD round because the original round had been scheduled incorrectly, but HR declined. The HM advocated for me and has asked another HM to hire me for SDE 1.

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Should I Take the SDE1 Offer?

This is where I'm currently unsure.

I have 3.3 years of experience, and I've already been working as an SDE2 for around 1.5 years.

Amazon is offering me SDE1 because they weren't convinced about SDE2 based primarily on the HLD and Bar Raiser rounds.

I'm currently deciding between:

Option 1: Accept the SDE1 offer and join Amazon.

Option 2: Decline the offer and continue interviewing for SDE2 roles elsewhere.

I'd really appreciate advice from people who have been in a similar situation, especially current/former Amazon engineers.

Questions I'd love opinions on:

1. Is taking an SDE1 role with 3.3 YOE and ~1.5 years of SDE2 experience a bad career move?
2. How difficult is it to get promoted from SDE1 → SDE2 at Amazon?
3. Would joining Amazon at SDE1 still make sense for the brand, compensation, learning, and future opportunities?
4. Would you decline and continue looking for SDE2 roles?
5. Is there any realistic way to negotiate the level after receiving this kind of result?

Would really appreciate honest opinions, especially from people who have experienced Amazon's leveling process firsthand.