Amazon Software Development Engineer Interview Guide

Amazon’s software engineers (SWEs), also known as software development engineers (SDEs), are innovative architects who craft the groundbreaking technologies that many of us rely on in our day-to-day lives. From revolutionizing database management in the cloud to redefining how millions experience video streaming, they're the driving force behind the tech behemoth’s most ambitious projects.

If you enjoy tackling complex challenges and shaping every aspect of the software lifecycle as part of a dynamic team, an SDE role at Amazon may be right for you. As an SDE, you’ll contribute to truly substantial projects, likely with global reach, and also mentor and inspire the next generation of tech talent. Below, we explain in detail how to prepare for the Amazon software engineer interview, including tips for success.

What does an Amazon SDE do?

Like many other roles at Amazon, an SDE's day-to-day work experience differs based on team. This is because many processes aren’t standardized, so project management is often left to the individual team lead. The SDE we spoke to described a big difference between working on mature legacy projects (think core infrastructure or forecasting) and newly spun-up teams (for example, if you were on the grocery team responsible for launching Amazon’s grocery subscription).

Engineers working on mature products have months to complete projects rather than weeks because they’re likely working with more legacy code and will need to spend more time fixing things that break. Teams working on newer products, on the other hand, move at a faster pace to ship quickly.

Entry-level engineers generally spend most of their time coding. As their experience increases, however, they spend less time coding and more time designing architecture or reviewing other engineers’ code. Here’s the kind of work you can generally expect for engineering roles of different levels:

• Engineer I: Entry-level, codes 70% of the time
• Engineer II: 3+ years of experience, codes 40-50% of the time
• Senior Engineer: Codes 5-10% of the time, with the rest of the time spent mentoring, reviewing code, etc.

Because of Amazon’s massive reach and the variety of products and services offered, SDEs work closely with a wide variety of stakeholders. This includes data scientists, product managers, technical program managers, and business analysts. Some engineering managers are more hands-off than others, in which case engineers are expected to communicate with stakeholders when needed. You may find yourself communicating directly with project managers or product managers as you build.

Many teams at Amazon regularly hire SDEs, including the following:

• Amazon Web Services (AWS): The Software Development team at AWS is responsible for leading, designing, and developing Amazon’s software applications and systems.
• Alexa and Amazon Devices: This team invents and reinvents ground-breaking products and features such as Alexa, Kindle, Fire Tablets, Fire TV, Echo, Astro, Luna, Ring, and Project Kuiper. They enable voice-activated experiences, curate memories, and enable smart home connectivity and security, delivering advanced ambient intelligence and more.
• Operations Technology: Responsible for building and supporting the technology used by Amazon businesses to deliver packages to customers, this team streamlines processes using cutting-edge applications in science, machine learning, and scalable distributed software on the cloud. They ensure orders are delivered quickly, accurately, and cost-effectively, exceeding customer expectations.
• Amazon Retail: With a focus on delivering unparalleled customer service, this team owns high-impact programs like Prime, Amazon Go, Whole Foods, private label products, and all other retail categories. They may work on developing machine learning software as well as voice ordering apps.
• Amazon Ads: Engineers and other team members work to reimagine the advertising experience for everyone at Amazon Ads.
• eCommerce Foundation: This team is responsible for delivering a safe, simple, and consistent shopping experience on Amazon.com. They manage core systems, services, and infrastructure behind Amazon.com, hosting Amazon websites worldwide and creating services used company-wide for system development and operation.
• Amazon Entertainment: Amazon Entertainment delivers award-winning movies, TV shows, music, games, audiobooks, and podcasts to customers around the world. From Amazon’s origin as a bookseller, along with the disruptive spirit of Prime reinventing membership, team members work to reimagine entertainment.
• Shopping: Shopping powers customer experiences on Amazon Stores worldwide, from the front-end customer experience to back-end services and technology. SDEs leverage machine learning to launch innovations like customer reviews highlights, visual search experiences, and social collaborative shopping.
• Amazon Business: This team focuses on creating innovative purchasing and procurement solutions.
• Selling Partner Services: Selling Partner Services enables the long-term success of Amazon’s selling partners by enhancing their shopping and selling experience and helping accelerate business growth. They prevent fraud and abuse, advocate for customers, and innovate at massive scale through technology, science, and expert human judgment, envisioning the future.

In terms of compensation, Amazon SDE base salaries range from $137,000 to $254,000 per year, not including bonus and stock.

What are the typical job requirements for an Amazon SDE?

Generally, Amazon SDEs are required to have:

• Technical education. Recent postings require a bachelor’s degree in computer science or equivalent, and decent experience with at least one software programming language.
• 2+ years of professional experience. Some postings require this to be non-internship professional experience, but Amazon does hire new grads.
• Experience designing or architecting software systems. Interviewers are looking for candidates with a solid understanding of common design patterns, reliability testing, and measurement, and designing for scalability in new and existing systems.

Preferred qualifications listed on Amazon’s careers page tend to include similar items regardless of team. Here are some examples:

• 1+ years of full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, and operations experience.
• Experience building complex software systems that have been successfully delivered to customers.
• Experience contributing to the architecture and design (architecture, design patterns, reliability, and scaling) of new and current systems.

Many job postings include a master’s or a PhD in computer science as a preferred qualification, but higher education is not an expectation. As one Amazon SDE and interviewer shared with us, “If you can get an interview in the first place, an advanced degree doesn’t matter.”

Recommendations before you apply for Amazon SDE roles

• Understand Amazon’s company culture. Amazon’s company culture is known for its fast-paced and competitive environment, which can be a challenge for those who prioritize work-life balance. This will vary depending on the team you’re on, so it's crucial to research and understand the specific dynamics of the team you're applying to. Look into employee reviews, blog posts, and news articles to gauge the typical work environment and expectations.
• Quantify accomplishments on your resume to emphasize impact. Your resume is the perfect way to demonstrate your capabilities. To make it stronger and stand out as a candidate, use specific numbers, percentages, or metrics to quantify the outcomes of your work. For example, list “Improved [feature] by [X]%” instead of only writing “improved [feature].” Also review your resume to make sure you can tell a coherent, compelling story around all the experiences listed, and why you’re an ideal candidate.
• Practice with mock interviews. Mock interviews provide a chance to identify areas of weakness and hone your communication skills. Don’t limit your pool of mock partners to other SDEs and peers in tech—grab a non-tech friend and describe the most recent project you worked on. Also consider getting Amazon-specific interview coaching for sharper practice.
• Seek out past and present Amazon employees for advice. Find a few Amazon SDEs on Exponent or LinkedIn and ask them about their experiences. They may be able to give firsthand insight on their interview experience and are great sources of information and support.

Interview Process

The interview process for Amazon SDEs generally includes:

• An online screen to assess your technical ability (60 minutes)
• A phone screen with a recruiter to identify any red flags that would prevent you from moving forward (60 minutes)
• An interview loop with 3-5 hour-long rounds centered around technical skills and Amazon’s Leadership Principles, as well as interviews on any niche topics your prospective role works on, e.g., AI

However, employees report that the hiring process at Amazon is unstandardized. So if possible, try to research how interviews are typically run within the specific team you’re interviewing with.

According to one engineering interviewer we spoke to:

“When I gave interviews at Amazon, I would pick whatever question I felt like. And that makes Amazon, I think, a little harder because I might ask two medium-level questions, but I had coworkers give one hard question. So it's gonna vary wildly depending on who interviews you.”

After the interview loop, interviewers will debrief and make their hiring decisions. You may be asked to schedule an additional interview if interviewers don’t feel they have enough information to make a decision, but this is rare.

If you ace the interview and accept an offer, you’ll have the opportunity to apply for transfers within the company. Amazon SDEs report that this process varies widely. In some cases, you might be pulled from a team to support another that is short-staffed. In that case, you won’t be interviewed again. Other SDEs have reported going through the full external interview loop when interviewing for internal roles.

Technical Screen

Before connecting with a recruiter, you must first pass an online technical screen that runs for 60 minutes. You’ll be emailed a link asking you to complete multiple coding questions on HackerRank involving basic data structures (e.g., arrays, lists) and algorithms (e.g., searching, sorting).

Some candidates report answering two questions, while others were given up to five. Overvall, candidates report a medium level of difficulty in the questions they encountered.

Sample questions worth practicing include:

If you pass the technical screen, a recruiter will contact you to schedule a phone screening.

Phone Screen

The next step in Amazon’s software engineer interview process is a phone screen with a recruiter. This call is your chance to share about your professional experience and explain why you’d be a great match for Amazon.

You won’t face very technical questions in this screening. Instead, expect questions about your experience, your motivation for applying, and what makes you the right fit for the job. If you haven’t already, spend time brushing up on Amazon’s Leadership Principles before this call. Amazon’s behavioral questions focus on assessing your alignment with these principles, and they are asked throughout the entire interview process, not only at this stage.

Your recruiter will also offer detailed information on what to expect in the interview loop and how best to prepare. Prepare any questions you might have in advance, and don’t be afraid to ask for advice. Amazon’s recruiters are invested in your success.

Here are some common screening questions:

Interview Loop

If you pass both screens, you’ll move on to Amazon’s interview loop, which consists of 4-5 rounds. The exact breakdown varies significantly by team, but you can count on multiple coding rounds mixed with behavioral questions related to Amazon’s Leadership Principles, and likely at least one system design round.

You may also get questions on any niche topics that an SDE on your team would be expected to work heavily with. For example, if you’re interviewing with the operations technology team for an SDE position that involves machine learning, you may be asked about your experience with ML or your thoughts on recent ML advances.

Because each interviewer is free to ask their questions, it’s hard to pinpoint what you’ll face. Remember, you can always ask your recruiter for details.

Let’s look at each round in more depth.

Coding

Candidates report that coding interviews at Amazon consist of a mix of data structures and algorithms questions, plus more conceptual questions on object-oriented design. Some candidates are given two easy- or medium-level questions, while others are given a single hard question to work through over an hour. You may be interviewed by peer SDEs or managers.

Most successful candidates report giving a brute force solution first, then a solution optimized for time-space complexity. Although you probably won’t get an offer if you don’t arrive at a solution, you won’t be expected to compile your code. Interviewers may accept pseudocode if your explanation is solid.

Common questions include:

To ace coding rounds, we recommend working through practice problems. Start by reviewing common data structures such as:

• Graphs and Trees
• Arrays
• Linked Lists
• Stacks and Queues
• Hash Tables

Then review key algorithms:

• Sorting Algorithms
• Binary Search
• Graph Search
• Recursion
• Dynamic Programming

If you’re less familiar with coding interviews, it can be helpful to watch mock interviews for guidance. For starters, here’s how software engineers at Google, Meta, and Microsoft work through common coding questions:

• Generate Parentheses (Watch a Google SWE answer.)
• Minimum Window Substring (Watch a Meta SWE answer.)
• Buy and Sell Stock (Watch a Microsoft SWE answer.)

An ex-Amazon hiring manager stressed that when preparing for coding interviews, consistency is key. For less experienced candidates, they recommend solving one easy (and highly rated) coding question per day to build confidence and familiarity. After about two weeks, coding problems will become more of a fun challenge, and you’ll build confidence in a very realistic set of problems.

Then try your hand at these sample problems:

• Find Largest Smaller BST Key
• Shortest Cell Path
• Build a Basic Regex Parser

Practice solving easy problems in 15-20 minutes and hard problems in 30-40 minutes. In coding interviews, it’s a red flag for many interviewers when a candidate jumps right into coding without building a solid understanding of the problem.

The ex-Amazon hiring manager we spoke with shared that top candidates generally demonstrate a very systematic approach: “First, they might gather requirements and really think through ‘What is this question asking me? Are there any gotchas? Are there any edge cases?’ Then they think through a solution, maybe even draw it out in pseudocode, and then they explain it to me.”

System Design

Most SDE candidates at Amazon will face at least one system design question. Questions like “Design Netflix” are common, and can trip up candidates who aren’t used to designing with so few parameters. Interviewers aren’t looking for a perfect solution; rather, they’re interested in observing your problem-solving approach and strategy.

In this round, interviewers pay attention to your ability to:

• Analyze a complex problem
• Design the blueprint of an architecture that makes sense
• Discuss multiple solutions and requirements
• Weigh multiple pros and cons to reach a workable solution
• Think through edge cases and scalability concerns that will pop up in real-world implementations

Most interviewees won’t get questions that require knowledge of core Amazon technology, but it doesn’t hurt to research the tech stack and general responsibilities your prospective team uses daily. Check out Amazon’s architecture blog, the AWS blog, or CTO Werner Vogel’s blog All Things Distributed to build your familiarity.

Here are some examples of systems design questions commonly asked of SDE candidates:

You’re encouraged to be creative with your approach to system design questions. However, if you need some guidance for getting started, we recommend following this 5-step framework:

• First, define the problem. Ask clarifying questions until you thoroughly understand the task and have a concrete set of requirements.
• Then design a high-level system. Start simple and expand later if needed.
• Deep dive into the component-level decisions. Explain each component choice, the APIs, and the data model. Whiteboard your design, articulating your thought process throughout.
• Identify bottlenecks and scale your system.
• Finally, review your design. Run through your requirements again, suggest any changes you’d make given more information, summarize tradeoffs, and answer any questions.

Behavioral / Leadership Principles

Rarely do SDEs have a standalone behavioral round, but many candidates report that nearly half of the total time spent in the interview loop consists of behavioral questions centered around Amazon’s Leadership Principles. The interview loop may also include a bar raiser responsible for ensuring that every new hire meets Amazon’s quality standards.

Behavioral questions at Amazon often appear in the “Tell me when…” format. There may be standard behavioral questions such as “How do you manage conflict?” but overall, you should expect to receive more nuanced technical retrospective questions like “Tell me about a time you achieved results even when under-resourced.” Your answers should reflect that you are a strong individual performer who can navigate ambiguity while also contributing to a team and agreeing to disagree when necessary.

To practice, review behavioral questions like:

In addition to assessing whether you embody its Leadership Principles, Amazon is looking for:

• Excellent communication skills
• Dedication to servant leadership even in individual contributor roles
• Passion for your prospective work

We recommend creating a story bank of experiences that speak to the Leadership Principles. As you create your story bank, ask yourself these questions to ensure you’re in alignment.

• When have I worked tirelessly to build value for the customer?
• When have I displayed a sense of ownership over my decisions and actions?
• When have I been able to think outside of the box to simplify or solve a problem?
• When have I been right, when others have been wrong?
• When have I built connections with excellent peers?
• When have I insisted on high standards, despite external pressure?
• When have I taken action when I could have stood by waiting for direction?
• When have I been able to zoom in to execute at a detailed level, while zooming out again to consider the big picture?
• When have I agreed to disagree with coworkers or friends?
• When have I been results-oriented?
• How do I nurture my team and my immediate connections with others?
• How have I changed my mind or my actions when considering the impact I’m having on others?

Tips and Strategies

• Ask your recruiter for details on the interview process. The hiring manager we spoke with explained that recruiters want you to pass the interview; otherwise, it’s a waste of everyone’s time. “For whatever reason, I feel like this is the most obvious thing to ask your recruiter,” they shared. “But I can't tell you the number of people they're like, ‘Oh, never thought to ask the recruiter.’”
• Get feedback on your performance. Along the same lines, it’s best practice to ask your recruiter for feedback on your performance regardless of the outcome. You’ll not only learn from your mistakes and continually improve at interviewing, but you also demonstrate proactivity and an interest in personal growth.
• Prepare to offer a thought-out opinion on core products. Amazon won’t ask detailed questions specific to its products, but it doesn’t hurt to do some research for the product your prospective team works on. For SDEs especially, this research could easily pay off in system design interviews. Do some research in advance so you can give a meaningful answer that demonstrates a solid understanding of Amazon and its approach to product.
• Practice “Tell me about a time when…” questions. These are opportunities to guide the conversation toward an experience that’s meaningful to you. Interviewers are looking for you to articulate a meaningful story that is within the scope of your level and clearly shows you handling a situation properly.

Additional Resources

• Amazon’s Interview prep for Software Development Engineer (SDE)
• SDE II Interview Prep
• SDE jobs at Amazon
• Interviewing at Amazon
• Software Engineering Interview Course
• Amazon Interview Course
• Amazon Leadership Principles Course
• Amazon Software Development Manager (SDM) Interview Guide
• Top Amazon Software Engineer Interview Questions
• Top Amazon Interview Questions
• Top Data Structures & Algorithms Questions

FAQs

• Does Amazon offer software engineer internships? Yes! Amazon has a large internship program that includes roles with its engineering teams. Roles also exist for recent master’s and PhD grads.
• What is Amazon’s mission? Amazon strives to be “Earth’s most customer-centric company, Earth’s best employer, and Earth’s safest place to work.” To that end, the company follows four key principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking.