Interview Experience - 110 - Amazon | Software Development Engineer | L5

Summary

Job Role: Software Development Engineer
Number of Rounds: 7
Offer Status: Rejected
Location: London
Candidate Name: Not disclosing due to signed NDA

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Interview Process

I applied for the L5 Software Development Engineer role at Amazon’s London office. The process included multiple stages, starting from an online assessment, followed by a phone screen, and concluding with a full-day final onsite loop consisting of five interviews.

The Online Assessment was hosted on HackerRank and covered three key areas: coding, system design (via MCQs), and behavioral judgment (via scenario-based MCQs).

The Phone Screen was split into two halves: the first focused on my previous work and resume, while the second was a simple coding round.

The Final Round loop had 5 back-to-back interviews:

• 1 High-Level Design + Behavioral

• 3 Coding + Behavioral

• 1 Behavioral-only

Post-interview, I received an offer for a SDE I (L4) role, not based in London, and with a compensation lower than my existing offer. Due to the mismatch in level, location, and package—as well as the disrespectful nature of the revised offer—I decided to reject it.

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Interview Rounds

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Round 1: Online Assessment (OA)

Duration: 90 minutes
Difficulty Level: Medium

Experience

The OA was conducted on HackerRank and had three distinct sections:

1. Coding

   • Two problems:

     • One was a variation of the balanced parenthesis problem.

     • The other involved standard string manipulation operations.

   • Both were of easy to medium difficulty and manageable within time.

2. Design (MCQs)

   • Multiple-choice questions on high-level system design concepts.

   • Topics included scalability, service interaction, and data flows.

3. Behavioral (MCQs)

   • This section tested responses to various workplace scenarios in alignment with Amazon’s leadership principles.

Key Learnings

• Practice medium-difficulty string and data structure problems.

• Brush up on scalable system architecture basics for MCQs.

• Understand how Amazon evaluates behavioral competencies through situational judgment tests.

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Round 2: Phone Screen

Duration: 60 minutes
Difficulty Level: Easy

Experience

This round was structured into two parts:

• First 30 minutes: Focused on my work experience.
  The interviewer asked detailed questions about my past projects, technical decisions, and ownership aspects.

• Last 30 minutes: A straightforward string manipulation coding task.
  The problem was basic and tested familiarity with operations like split(""), substring handling, and reconstruction logic.

I completed the task with ease and the conversation was smooth.

Key Learnings

• Keep your resume-driven project details ready—interviewers expect specific answers.

• Even simple coding tasks can be used to evaluate clarity and conciseness in implementation.

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Round 3: Final Round - Interview 1 (High-Level Design + Behavioral)

Duration: 60 minutes
Difficulty Level: Medium

Experience

This session was conducted by the hiring manager. The format was:

• Behavioral:

  • Several questions focusing on leadership principles like ownership and inventiveness.

• High-Level Design:

  • I was asked to design a solution for a given problem using microservices architecture.

  • I proposed two services interacting via REST APIs, laid out their responsibilities, and covered scaling and fault-tolerance strategies.

The interviewer was engaged throughout and the session was balanced. I would rate this as a 7-8 out of 10.

Key Learnings

• Clear communication of architectural decisions is key.

• Keep discussions user-centric and explain trade-offs.

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Round 4: Final Round - Interview 2 (Behavioral + Coding)

Duration: 60 minutes
Difficulty Level: Medium

Experience

This round started with behavioral questions covering topics like team dynamics, challenging decisions, and prioritization.

The coding task was to implement a find command, with a follow-up to extend it for filters like file size constraints (e.g., files < 20KB).
I completed the task successfully, and the interviewer seemed pleased with my structured approach and thorough testing.

I would rate this round 10/10.

Key Learnings

• Brush up on implementing real-world command-line utilities.

• Use modular functions and make code extensible.

• Behavioral questions often require depth; use concrete examples.

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Round 5: Final Round - Interview 3 (Behavioral + Coding)

Duration: 60 minutes
Difficulty Level: Medium

Experience

Another mix of behavioral and technical evaluation.

• Behavioral:

  • Focus on leadership scenarios and conflict resolution.

• Coding:

  • A string manipulation question that emphasized writing modular and scalable code.

  • I used helper functions and structured the logic to support easy future updates.

The interviewer appreciated the clean implementation and had no further questions. I'd rate this round 10/10.

Key Learnings

• Aim for clean abstractions in coding tasks.

• Always think one step ahead—code as if it will evolve.

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Round 6: Final Round - Interview 4 (Behavioral + Coding)

Duration: 60 minutes
Difficulty Level: Difficult

Experience

Another behavioral + technical round.

• Behavioral:

  • Similar to earlier ones, focused on ownership and customer obsession.

• Coding:

  • A variation of the Lowest Common Ancestor (LCA) problem, but this time for a tree with n children instead of a binary tree.

  • I was initially confused but managed to arrive at a working solution before the session ended.

This was the toughest round for me. I’d rate it 7/10.

Key Learnings

• Review advanced tree and graph problems, especially non-binary versions.

• It’s okay to take a few minutes to settle in — clarity matters more than speed.

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Round 7: Final Round - Interview 5 (Behavioral)

Duration: 60 minutes
Difficulty Level: Medium

Experience

This final round was purely behavioral. It covered multiple Amazon Leadership Principles, including:

• Customer Obsession

• Bias for Action

• Deliver Results

• Dive Deep

The interviewer probed for real-life examples and followed up with “what-if” questions to evaluate consistency of thought and adaptability.

Key Learnings

• Prepare multiple STAR-format stories aligned to leadership principles.

• Be authentic and detailed—vagueness gets flagged quickly.

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Final Thoughts

While the interview process was comprehensive and professionally conducted, the post-interview experience was underwhelming. After a detailed 7-round process, being offered a lower-level (L4) role in a different location with lower compensation than my current offer felt disingenuous.

Overall Takeaways for Future Candidates

• Clarify level and compensation expectations early in the process with the recruiter.

• Amazon places equal weight on technical skills and leadership principles—prepare accordingly.

• Focus not just on solving problems, but on how you solve them — design, clarity, modularity, and thought process are deeply scrutinized.

• Be ready to walk away if the offer doesn’t align with your expectations — know your worth.