Amazon US SDE 2 (L5) Interview Experience

I recently went through the Amazon SDE 2 interview loop and wanted to share my experience.

Round1: Coding + Leadership Principles

Leadership Principles Started with 2 LP questions with follow-up questions.

Coding Question: Task Status System Problem : Determine the status of each task based on its subtasks. My Approach: Solved using DFS with time complexity O(n).

Round 2: Hiring Manager + System Design

Leadership Principles Started with 2 LP questions with lots of follow-up questions. I kind of murmured a bit for one LP but gave all follow-up answers properly.

System Design: Amazon Device Locator Service Had only 20 minutes for the system design portion after LPs.

My Solution: I designed a distributed system with components including:

• Locator devices sending data
• Kafka for message streaming
• Real-time processing service
• Separate read/write database clusters
• Caching layer
• API Gateway
• Various services for queries, geo-fencing, and notifications

Round 3: OOP Design + Leadership Principles

Leadership Principles Started with 2 LP questions with follow-up questions.

Low-Level Design: Shape Class Hierarchy

My Solution: For Rectangle, I implemented appropriate scale and move operations.

Due to time constraints, the interviewer asked me to focus on implementing the merge operation for Circle. I implemented a solution that:

1. Calculated the distance between circle centers
2. Created a new circle that encompasses both original circles

Round 4: Coding + Leadership Principles

Leadership Principles Started with 2 LP questions with follow-up questions.

Coding question: Medium to Hard leetcode style. Solved with time complexity O(E log V).

Overall Experience

The interview heavily focused on Amazon's Leadership Principles, with 2 LP questions in each round. Technical questions covered a good mix of problem-solving skills.