amazon interview questions

A Senior Engineer’s Guide to Amazon's Interview Process and Questions

The Amazon Hiring Process and Common Questions

~20 minute read

Amazon interview stages (quick outline)

  1. Resume screen
  2. Recruiter call or online assessment
  3. Technical phone screen (if you didn’t do the online assessment)
  4. Onsite / virtual loop
  5. Offer & negotiation

All human organizations operate as a metaphor. Amazon isn’t a sports team or a family; they’re a motley crew of Terminators. They’re a different breed with notoriously high standards. They reward aggression. And they want to take over the market (or the earth, depending on who you ask)...

Amazon’s process is not centralized, and you can interview with multiple teams concurrently. To up your odds, interview with as many teams as you have the appetite for.

Amazon really loves their Leadership Principles (LPs). Amazon interviewers may sandwich LP questions anywhere and everywhere throughout your interview rounds: coding rounds, system design rounds, all rounds. In short, at an Amazon interview, be prepared for Leadership Principles questions anywhere, anytime.

Finally, Amazon has one of the more-structured interviewing cultures. They’re the only FAANG where interviewers exist in a formal hierarchy, and Amazon openly encourages and rewards interviewers who reach the top rung in that hierarchy.

In this guide we’ve compiled a comprehensive Amazon job interview prep guide based on in-depth discussions with Amazon interviewers and interviewees. Our guide includes a detailed walkthrough of the interview process, common questions and solutions, interview tips, video replays of mock Amazon interviews, and more.

Want to know if you’re ready to interview at Amazon? Do anonymous mock interviews with real Amazon interviewers, and see exactly where you stack up.

An overview of Amazon's interview process and questions

Amazon’s interview process consists of the following steps:

We walk through each of these steps in detail below.

Step 1: Online assessment or recruiter call

Whether you start with an online assessment or an Amazon recruiter call depends on a few factors:

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you will likely not have to do an online assessment, and your first step will be a recruiter call. That said, we’ve gotten some conflicting reports from Amazonians, and it may be that Amazon has more recently started using online assessments to test the competencies of more senior engineers as well.

If you do the online assessment, here’s how it works. It’s a timed, asynchronous test consisting of several coding problems, conducted via HackerRank. These are usually data structures and algorithm problems of easy to medium-level difficulty, as well as some multiple choice system design questions where you have to select the design option that’s ideal in a given situation. If you do well in the online assessment, you can skip the second step, which is the technical phone screen.

If you end up skipping the online assessment, the first step in your process will be a recruiter call. Please see the section above called “A note about recruiter calls.”

Step 2: Technical phone screen

Amazon’s technical phone interview is a coding interview that tends to focus exclusively on data structures and algorithms. Despite the focus on speed, Amazon interview questions may require a lot of code, and the time allowed is usually 30-40 minutes, which means you’ll usually get one question, as opposed to Facebook, where you might get multiple questions.

For these screens, Amazon uses an internal tool called Livecode, which has syntax highlighting for popular languages but does NOT have the ability to run the code. In fact, no code is ever compiled or run in Amazon technical interviews.

Finally, there’s a 50% chance that your interviewer will throw in 1 or 2 Leadership Principles questions into the phone screen. They’re not guaranteed, but they’ll definitely come up during the onsite.

Step 3: Onsite interviews

There’s some variance, but the typical Amazon onsite, or in-person interview, for technical roles, will consist of:

Amazon has a special type of interviewer that they include in onsite loops: the Bar Raiser. These are typically senior-level Amazon employees at the top of the formal interviewer hierarchy, and they’re the toughest and most-trained interviewers at Amazon. They serve as an independent and objective evaluator, asking follow-up questions, and ensuring that hiring decisions are not influenced solely by the candidate's immediate team or department.

At Amazon, Bar Raisers and hiring managers are the only interviewers who have the formal authority to veto a hiring decision. You can recognize them because they are the only interviewer in your onsite loop who has nothing to do with the team you’re interviewing for. Bar Raiser rounds can be super intense, but don’t shrink when you feel a Bar Raiser throw flames your way; embrace the fire.

AI usage in Amazon interviews

AI usage in Amazon interviews is strictly prohibited.

The three types of Amazon interview

There are three main types of interviews you’ll face as a software engineer interviewing at Amazon. These are coding, behavioral, and system design interviews.

1. Coding interview

You will have to do coding interviews in the phone screen and in the onsite. Coding rounds at the onsite are very similar to technical phone screen rounds, except that in the technical phone screen you might get Leadership Principles questions, whereas in the onsite coding portion, you definitely will.

Amazon asks mostly medium-difficulty LeetCode-style coding questions and avoids hard questions. The idea is to let candidates demonstrate how quickly they get to the optimal result, all in the service of hiring engineers who can churn out new features quickly.

Despite the focus on speed, Amazon questions may be a complex problem that requires a lot of code, and the time allowed is usually 30-40 minutes, which means you’ll usually get one question, as opposed to Facebook, where you might get multiple questions.

Amazon’s coding rounds test the following technical skills:

  1. Computer science fundamentals and knowledge of data structures and algorithms
  2. The ability to write logical and maintainable code. These rounds require writing some classes and implementing some functions, e.g., “Implement some common functions of a file system”

Although your performance in technical interviews matters (if you fail the technical, you usually will not move forward), it’s not as important as the outcome of the behavioral interview, and coding interviews during the onsite at Amazon actually feature Leadership Principles questions.

2. Behavioral interview

The behavioral interview is one of, along with coding interviews at the onsite, the most important in terms of leading to an offer.

Behavioral is an extremely important part of the Amazon interview process – Amazon is more likely to downlevel or reject you solely based on behavioral – and their behavioral round might be the most well-thought-out interview in all of big tech. It also might be the easiest to fail if you don’t specifically prepare for it. There’s no flavor like the flavor of an Amazonian behavioral interviewer; if you’ve never encountered it before and don’t expect it, it can be jarring.

One of the most common mistakes our users make is not taking this interview seriously because at most other companies, behavioral interviews tend to be more lip service than a meaningful part of the process. The bottom line is, if you want an Amazon job at a senior level or above, you have to seriously prepare for the behavioral interview questions.

Tip to get unstuck

Not all Leadership Principles are created equal. Customer Obsession is the 👑one Leadership Principle to rule them all. When in doubt, demonstrate Customer Obsession. If you get a curveball, give an answer that shows you’re deeply committed to making things customers love.

3. System design interview

System design and coding aren’t the be-all and end-all at Amazon – of course, you still have to pass them, but if your performance is borderline, doing well on behavioral Leadership Principles questions will take you over the finish line. In fact, interviewers will likely ask you 1-2 Leadership Principles questions in your system design interviews. Try to be efficient when answering LP questions in system design rounds. LPs come first. Finish them early so that you have more time for the technical question.

Amazon interviewers are allowed to ask whatever they want in system design, but a lot of interviewers fall back on reusing questions from Amazon’s question bank.

How Amazon makes hiring decisions

Amazon has one of the more well-structured decision-making processes in tech: teams typically do a pre-brief (live meeting before the onsite), submit asynchronous feedback, and also do a debrief (live meeting after the onsite). They rely heavily on live discussion to make decisions. Notably, though some interviewers might be able to tell an outlier story of a time a regular interviewer out-argued a Bar Raiser, most of the time the interviewers go along with what the Bar Raiser says.

Resources to prepare yourself for an Amazon coding interview

We’ve aggregated a bunch of useful Amazon content for you! We have replays of candidates doing mock interviews with Amazon interviewers, long-form solutions to common Amazon questions, and deep dives into technical topics that tend to come up in Amazon interviews.

Videos of mock interviews conducted by Amazon interviewers

Below are a series of mock interview replays, conducted by Amazon interviewers on our platform. Watch them so you can learn from others’ mistakes.

9 common Amazon interview questions and solutions

Below are common questions that interviewers from Amazon ask on our platform as well as sample answers. Since our data comes from mock interviews, questions may not be exactly the same as what you'd see in real interviews.

MEDIUM
Data Structures and Algorithms

Three Sum

Given an array of integers, return an array of triplets such that i != j != k and nums[i] + nums[j] + nums[k] = 0.

MEDIUM
Data Structures and Algorithms

Count Complete Tree Nodes

Given the root of a complete binary tree, return the number of nodes in the tree.

MEDIUM
Data Structures and Algorithms

Partition Equal Subset Sum

Given an array of positive numbers, determine if the array can be split such that the two partition sums are equal.

MEDIUM

Longest Substring with At Most K Distinct Characters

Given a string, find the length of the longest substring in it with no more than K distinct characters.

HARD
System Design

Design LeetCode

Design a coding competition platform with a leaderboard and execution environment.

Amazon interview process FAQ

How long does the Amazon hiring process take?

Typically 4–8 weeks end-to-end, depending on scheduling, interviewer availability, and whether you’re speaking with multiple teams.

Do I have to take the online assessment (OA)?

Not always. Some senior candidates skip it, but Amazon has been using OAs more broadly again. Expect it unless your recruiter confirms otherwise.

How many interviews are in the loop?

Usually 4–6 interviews, covering coding, system design, Leadership Principles, the hiring manager, and the Bar Raiser.

Are loops virtual or onsite?

Most loops are virtual, though some teams may request onsite interviews depending on the role and location.

What coding environment will I use?

What language should I use for coding interviews?

Whatever language you’re most effective in. Amazon is language-agnostic.

Can Leadership Principle questions appear in technical rounds?

Yes. LP questions can appear in any interview, including coding and system design.

How should I prepare for behavioral (LP) questions?

Prepare clear, concise examples using something like the STAR structure, emphasizing your actions and the results.