I applied through a recruiter. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon in Nov 2015
Interview
It was for Amazon Hyderabad location. JD I received clearly mentioned the position is for computer vision and machine learning research position. I was interviewed over telephone for initial two rounds. Nothing technically deep was asked in the initial rounds. Later I was invited to Hyderabad office for face to face interview and I was interviewed for 3 rounds face to face. None had the expertise to ask domain related questions. They asked me very basics of image processing, and asked to write codes for the same. Amazon Hyderabad clearly accepted that they do not have people with technical skills to judge me and hence I will have one more round from US over telephone. So far so good. Just before I had telephone round from US I had one more interview via VC to Hyderabad office. In the US telephonic round the interviewer listened to my projects and did not ask me single question related to machine learning, computer vision or even image processing. I was asked to code dynamic allocation of 2D array in continuous memory block.
I was surprised. Amazon want people for ML or CV and no domain questions! Not even single one. And my 7th round with amazon research scientist position is 2d array allocation. BTW I was not offered the position mentioning I did not clear my final round of online exam. What I felt really bad is, if u had to reject a researcher for coding, that u could have done it in initial 2-3 rounds as I am clearly told that I am applying for research scientist position and not software engineer position. Until all 7 rounds I was never asked for my domain knowledge.
I asked the recruitment team to send me feedback of interview so that I get to know where I went wrong! No response from amazon. Total ignorance.
I had a zoom call with the hiring manager. I was asked technical questions during the interview, such as "How do you compute the conditional median of a set of data points?"
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
If u ~ Uniform(0, 1), what is the distribution of -log(u)? Solution: Expontial(1).
Five interviews, all had behavioral components, three coding questions, one system design question. The behavioral questions were of the form "Tell me about a time when..." and were meant to reflect Amazon's Leadership Principles.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about a time when you were unhappy with the status quo
Pretty fast and well-organized interview process. Scheduling was easy, communication of different interview expectations was clear, and feedback came quickly after each stage, which made the overall experience quite smooth.