I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Amazon in Nov 2014
Interview
A friend referred me to the role. All communication was done by email. I picked up a time that I could take the technical test, and when the time has come, the recruiter sent the test by email. This was for the Brazilian office, so the process was shorter than for the US office (the recruiter told me).
The test was 2 questions and I had 60 minutes (extensible to 90 if needed) to develop the 2 questions, either in Java or C++. After the time, I sent the email back with my answers, and after 4 days they told me that I didn't make it.
All the process was really cool, the recruiter answered all the emails as fast as possible and was very nice to me.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
The first question was to find the first word on a stream that do not repeat in the rest of the stream. I got some Interfaces that I needed to implement, there was a example input and output.
The second question was to design a backup system that count how many tapes would be required to store files in the most efficient way, knowing that:
1. Never place more than two files on the same tape.
2. Files cannot be split across multiple tapes. It's guaranteed that all tapes have the same size and that they will always be able to store the largest file.
Surprisingly easy — I expected tougher questions, but the coding round felt more like a warm-up. The main challenge was a DSA problem about counting islands in a 2D grid, which led to a discussion on DFS versus BFS and handling large grids. Funny enough, I had revisited that exact type of question while prepping on PracHub, which made me feel more confident. The interview wrapped up with a behavioral round, and I accepted an offer, but ultimately decided to decline it for another opportunity. Overall, it was a smooth experience.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Number of Islands — given a 2D grid of '1's (land) and '0's (water), count the number of connected islands. Walk through DFS vs BFS, and discuss how to avoid revisiting cells (in-place mutation vs visited set) and what changes if the grid is huge and must stream from disk.
It started with an OA, and then after a few weeks, I got invited to four rounds of interviews: technical and behavioral at 3 of the 4, and behavioral only at one.
I applied online. I interviewed at Amazon (Calgary, AB) in Jun 2026
Interview
Online Assessment is the first step in the process. I didn’t have an HR phone screening and went straight to the OA after applying. It was sent to me about a week after I submitted my application.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The first question is LeetCode style algorithms question, and the second question gives a full stack repo (choice of Java, NodeJS, or Django) and asks to solve a backend issue which is causing a bug in the frontend. Unit tests must pass to pass the second question. You can run both backend/frontend indivdually or together