SWECC Wiki

Amazon Interview Guide

Shawn Collinge, Simon Kurgan • • 4 min read

Lots of people ask about Amazon interviews, so I wanted to write up everything I know based on my experience and what I’ve seen from others.

Interview Format (Internship)

For Amazon SDE Intern roles, the typical process is:

  • 1 round — 45 to 60 minutes
    • ~2 behavioral questions
    • ~1 Leetcode-style coding question

Behavioral is weighted heavily — I’d estimate it’s about 50% of your performance, so don’t take it lightly or treat it as just a warmup.

Interview Format (Jr. Developer)

For Jr. Developer roles, the structure is similar to the intern roles no matter if its the first phone screen or like a hiring day/in-person/super day type setup and it goes like this:

  • 15 mins of behavioral
  • 1 Leetcode style question

Coding Portion

This is a standard Leetcode-style question.

  • Ask clarifying questions at the start
  • Talk through your thought process
  • Explain your solution out loud
  • Write correct, clean code
  • Discuss time & space complexity
  • Consider edge cases and test cases

Most people get an Easy or Easy-Medium difficulty question — but it’s possible to get unlucky with something harder.

At the Jr. Developer level, the strategy in addition to the tips above you can have is:

  • Being careful and intentional about the code you write
  • Most of these questions can come from the leetcode blind 75
  • There are chances you may get OOP style questions in the language of your choice
  • Be ready and able to take hints that the interviewers are offering
  • Be able to talk through tradeoffs that may come with the solution

Behavioral Portion (STAR Format)

Amazon loves STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) answers.

Key Tip: They’re not just looking for any story — they want to see Amazon Leadership Principles in your answers.

Questions can also evolve beyond the star method kind of questions, with types such as “Tell me about X in Y experience of yours”.

Strategy:

This remains the same irrespective of the type of question that you may receive.

  • Organize your experiences/bullets based on the leadership principles
  • Recognize which leadership principle(s) the question is targeting
  • Aim to touch on multiple principles within your answer if possible
  • Include measurable metrics whenever you can (impact, numbers, results)
  • Be personable and well prepared for the behavioral

This part of the interview is essentially testing - if the interviewer asks you some basic question about your experience are you prepared and can you hit these targets implicitly as you answer the question. Its absolutely meant to be conversational.

My Prep Method: STAR Spreadsheet

I personally made a spreadsheet where I:

  • Wrote out my STAR stories
  • Tagged which Leadership Principles each story hit
  • Used bullet points & metrics to jog my memory

This was super helpful during prep.

Amazon interview example

Resources for Amazon Leadership Principles

Highly recommend reading through these for examples of what Amazon looks for:

Offer Timeline

For me, it was very quick — less than a week after the interview.

At the time, Amazon used to send out intern offers on certain days of the week — I think it was:

  • Tuesday mornings
  • Friday mornings

(Or possibly Wednesday instead of Tuesday — not 100% sure if that’s still true.)

Either way, I received my offer about 3-4 days after my interview.

Final Thoughts

If you’re preparing for Amazon:

  • Take the behavioral section seriously — it’s just as important as the coding.
  • Prepare STAR stories with metrics and tie them to leadership principles.
  • Treat the coding round like a conversation, not just a silent Leetcode session.
  • Be ready to talk about impact, ownership, learning, and overcoming challenges.

Good luck!

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