I applied through college or university. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Amazon (Chennai) in Aug 2011
Interview
there was a initial group activity round where everyone was given two questions and asked to give solution to the respective mentor.
the questions were
1.in an array of integers find the largest sum that can be obtained by adding consecutive elements of the array
2.find the in-order successor of a node in a BST
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
In a library there are N books with the number of pages in ith book given by b_i.These books are to be distributed among K students such that the difference between the largest sum of pages in the books assigned to any student and the smallest sum of number of pages in the books assigned to any student is minimum for the given input. Also the books are arranged in a certain order and this order must never be changed.
For example:
suppose B[] contains the number of pages in each book.
Then for N=6 K=3 B={3,7,8,2,6,4}, the output will be 0 as we can give book 1 and 2 to student 1 and book 3 and 4 to student 2 and the remaining to student 3. That makes 10 pages for student 1 10 for 2 and 10 for 3 and thus the difference is 0
similarly when B={3,6,8,2,6,4} then the minimum difference will be 1 .
Great interview process with three rounds, including a technical assessment and a technical interview. The interviewers were professional and supportive throughout the process. The questions mainly focused on DSA, problem-solving, and core technical concepts. The discussions were engaging and provided a good opportunity to demonstrate technical skills. Overall, the process was well-structured, smooth, transparent, and a very positive experience.
I applied through college or university. I interviewed at Amazon (Dublín, Dublín)
Interview
Online techincal assessment. Had to screen share and complete basic coding tasks similar to Leet Code. Could choose a language of your choice. Overall a very fair system and judged based on merit.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Technical assessment so a basic leet code style question about reversing the orders of long numerical strings.
Loop — 4 rounds, all on the same day
Round 1 — Coding (DSA)
Interviewer was a senior SDE, very friendly.
Warm-up + behavioral: "Tell me about a time you took ownership of something outside your responsibilities."
Main question: Given a list of meeting intervals, find the minimum number of conference rooms required. I used a heap. He then asked a follow-up: what if meetings could be reassigned to minimize total idle time? We discussed approaches but didn't fully code it.
He cared a lot about how I talked through edge cases out loud.
Round 2 — Coding + Problem Solving
LP question: "Describe a situation where you disagreed with a teammate."
Coding: LRU Cache implementation from scratch. I used a hashmap + doubly linked list. He pushed on thread-safety and what happens at capacity 0.
Round 3 — Behavioral (Bar Raiser)
This was the toughest round — no coding, all Leadership Principles, very deep STAR-format probing.
Questions I got:
"Tell me about a time you failed and what you learned."
"A time you had to deliver something with a tight deadline and limited information."
The bar raiser kept drilling: "What was your specific contribution?" "What would you do differently?" "What data did you use?" Have 6–8 strong stories ready with metrics.
Round 4 — Low-Level Design
Design: Design a parking lot system (classes, vehicle types, spot allocation, pricing). Then he asked me to code the findSpot() and releaseSpot() methods.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Most coding questions were LeetCode Medium. Common themes: graphs, heaps, sliding window, hashmaps, and LRU/design., system design,
