Amazon UX Designer Interview Guide

tl;dr

Much like its namesake river, Amazon is titanic in scale. While Amazon began as a simple online bookstore in the 1990s, it’s since grown to handle nearly 40% of all of U.S. e-commerce. As of last year, Amazon truly became “the everything store,” processing nearly 500,000 product orders per day and serving over 200 million worldwide media subscribers through Amazon Prime. Amazon’s cloud computing service (AWS) hosts about one-third of all internet traffic, and generated $28.79 billion in revenue for the company in 2025.

Amazon is famous for its clearly-defined 16 Leadership Principles and exacting, standardized interview loops. Regardless of team or org within Amazon, UX interviewers are looking for candidates with experience in:

• User research, wireframing, and prototyping
• Business acumen, product thinking, and data analytics
• Strong written communication, especially in project briefs for nontechnical leadership
• Previous projects with a measurable revenue impact on an organization
• Cross-functional stakeholder management and presentation

What does an Amazon UX Designer do?

As a UX designer at Amazon, you’re the voice for the user (both internal and external) in every conversation. You’re the person sketching wireframes, building prototypes, conducting user research, and refining existing designs, all while balancing business goals.

Amazon’s famous “top down” culture means that you’ll have clear directives from executive leadership about what they want, but not necessarily how it should work, why it matters, or how it’ll affect user experience. That’s where you come in. You’ll be the glue to connect business goals to the teams who build the product— design, engineering, product, and data science.

Depending on which of Amazon’s teams you apply to, you could be designing UX for Amazon’s retail, entertainment, gaming, business supply, storage, publishing, or cloud computing orgs. Right now, Amazon’s cloud computing product, Amazon Web Services (AWS), is hiring most actively.

Within AWS, UX designers have a hand in every stage of software development—from initial research to execution. You’ll have ownership over both the architectural design and implementation of product experiences, and use your broad skill set that includes technical knowledge, customer research, and software development. You’ll be the one who ensures the products that serve one-third of all internet traffic are optimized, managed, and operating at scale; experience with distributed technology is definitely a plus. You’ll work closely with product and engineering teams, and take ownership in ambiguous situations.

One perk of working within the AWS product family is the unique mix of scale and culture. Teams at AWS often describe themselves as having “the culture of a startup, the innovation and creativity of an R&D lab, the work-life balance of a mature organization, and AWS-scale technical challenges.”

Amazon’s work culture is built on the foundation of its 16 Leadership Principles. Expect to be asked questions explicitly tied to the principles at every stage of the interview process.

The average total compensation across levels for UX designers at Amazon are:

• L4 (Designer 1): $141K
• L5 (Designer 2): $189K
• L6 (Designer 3): $276K
• L7 (Principal Designer): $387K

Before you apply

• Research recently asked interview questions at Amazon for UX Designers.
• Use our UX/Product Design Interviews course to hone your portfolio, critique, and behavioral skills.
• Read Amazon’s annual report to get a sense of their future priorities.
• Familiarize yourself with Amazon’s Leadership Principles.You’ll be explicitly asked about these principles throughout the interview process.
• Take our Portfolio Review course to prepare your work samples.
• Get ready for the functional exercise with our course on Brainstorming Product Ideas.

Interview process

Most Amazon UX designer interview loops take about 4–6 weeks, though senior roles can take longer. Amazon UX Designers  work in small teams with a large impact; typically a  1:3 designer-to-engineer hiring ratio.

While Amazon’s interview loops aren’t standardized across orgs—or even across teams—what is consistent is how you’re evaluated. Your interviewers will evaluate you on a standardized rubric and share detailed notes after your loop, with an emphasis on building consensus.

They’ll primarily assess your understanding of the Amazon Leadership Principles, along with your portfolio and presentation skills. This is usually a  team-matching process, to confirm that you’re an “Amazon-worthy” candidate, rather than a perfect fit for a specific team.

You’ll have 3 main steps between applying and getting your offer:

1. A 30-minute recruiter phone screen to get a sense of your work history
2. A 45-minute hiring manager round to get your responses to behavioral questions and preview your portfolio
3. A 4-hour day of onsite interviews, including:
   • A one-hour portfolio review with a manager
   • At least two 30-minute manager conversations where you’ll answer behavioral questions
   • A 40-minute functional exercise to see how you handle ambiguous UX problems
   • A one-hour Bar Raiser interview with a senior-level or executive to assess your leadership potential

Note: Hiring managers at Amazon typically meet candidates only once, but some candidates report meeting their hiring manager during onsite interviews. It varies by product area, but either way, it shouldn’t be a surprise. Some candidates also mention not having a functional exercise, but that seems to vary by product team. Amazon’s UX interview prep recommends that you prepare for it just in case (time well spent).

1. Recruiter phone screen

The recruiter phone screen takes about 30 minutes and is fairly similar to most others in big tech hiring. One exception is that your interviewer will verify that your portfolio is available and accessible for the hiring manager, as you’ll be discussing it with them. Hiring managers may ask recruiters to screen candidates for specific skills and traits, such as depth of design system experience and critical-thinking skills. They may ask you questions about your experience with complex design challenges and then pass those responses to the hiring manager. They’ll also verify your location and sponsorship status, which are both important now that Amazon has a full RTO mandate in place.

Because recruiters review thousands of resumes for each UX design role, even recruiter screens have high rates of rejection, with only around one-third of all total applicants passing this stage. Candidates typically fail at this stage when they underestimate the importance of demeanor and attitude.

Some topics can include:

• Your previous work experience
• Your location and sponsorship needs

Recent questions can include:

• Tell me about yourself.
• What’s your experience with design systems?
• Why Amazon?
• Where are you located?

2. Hiring manager interview

This one-hour conversation will cover about half portfolio review and half questions that assess how you communicate and lead cross-functionally. You won’t be expected to whiteboard in this interview.

During the portfolio-centric part of your interview, the hiring manager will be looking to establish your design skills in a project context, and how you storytell around those projects. Think of this as a mini version of the full portfolio review you’ll face at your onsite interview. In the interest of time, your hiring manager will likely ask you to talk through one or two projects, instead of three or four.

Because you’ll have limited time, it’s even more important to make sure your project narratives are structured and concise. With less than 30 minutes for this section, structure is everything. That said, don’t skip the introduction at the beginning of your portfolio. This is a great chance to spend a few seconds showcasing your personality, what drives you, and what differentiates you as a designer.

Some things to keep in mind as you prepare your answers:

• Structure. Even though this isn’t a full portfolio review, make sure you’re structuring your answers the same way, with a clear three-act format: the problem you were trying to solve, the solution you designed, and the outcome that resulted.
• Scale. AWS is one of the most high-traffic orgs in one of the most high-traffic companies on the internet. While your projects may not operate at this scale t, be prepared to talk about proportional impact on your users, and address questions with quantifiable metrics.
• Stakeholders. The more formal portfolio review later in the loop will dive into your experiences with user research and product thinking (and you should still plan to touch on both here, too). At this stage, the hiring manager will likely ask a few follow-up questions about your experience with internal stakeholders. What kind of experience do you have getting executives on board with a solution? How do these projects demonstrate your leadership skills and technical expertise?

At this stage, the key difference between a mid-level and senior-level UX designer is in their scope of vision. A senior-level UX designer at Amazon should be able to take a big-picture view at all facets of an issue—to see gaps that even their manager might have missed, and propose solutions to fill those gaps. While mid-level UX designers can see the product and the team, senior-level designers can zoom out even further, planning roadmap-level steps for an organization’s long-term success.

Some topics can include:

• Experience with design systems
• Cross-functional collaboration
• Previous projects

Recent questions can include:

• What’s the highest level of people you’ve presented to?
• What have you done when product owners or managers didn’t give you specific directives?
• How have you changed an opinion or direction using data?
• Tell me about a time when you had to make a decision without much customer data.
• What did you do when you needed to motivate a group to promote collaboration on a project? What was the problem and how did you decide what to do?
• What do you love about your current role?
• Tell me a situation where you took a calculated risk you took where speed was critical.
• Tell me about a time you had to work with developers.
• What is the most complex single interaction you’ve ever designed?

3. Onsite interviews

You’ll have four main segments of this interview loop. Typically these interviews are onsite,   in person. However, if your nearest office is at capacity, your recruiter will work with you to do them virtually.

Portfolio review

This one-hour portfolio presentation will be conducted by a manager on the design team, who will go into depth with you on at least three of your recent projects. As you prepare your portfolio for this interview, make sure that all your projects have a common theme: your key strengths as a designer. When you have this central theme in place, it’ll be easier to pick the three or four most recent projects that support it, making your portfolio more coherent and focused.

As you talk about your projects, make sure you’re storytelling clearly. Framing each project into a three-act narrative—like a Hollywood screenplay— can help you stay structured and engaging. Make sure to include:

1. The problem(s): What challenge were you trying to solve, from both business and user perspectives?
2. The solution: Walk through your process and demonstrate the outcome with a prototype or other visual artifact, if possible.
3. The outcome: Highlight what changed as a result, using business metrics and human impact.

Some “nice-to-have” additions to this structure can include:

• How you used competitive analysis to inform your design.
• A heuristic review if you used (or deviated from) established design processes.
• User research, with an emphasis on personas. Amazon UX teams work with user personas. Include user stories, affinity diagramming, human factors, and usability testing whenever possible.
• More involved artifacts, such as wireframes, design specs, flow diagrams, and prototypes.
• A brief retrospective, showing what went well, what could have gone better, and what you might do differently next time.

Your interviewer will be looking at your presentation to see how complex your past projects are, how you’ve worked within (or contributed to) design systems, and the overall breadth of your experience. Aim to showcase three distinct types of recent work—ideally projects that emphasize scale and complexity.

Unlike at other tech companies, like Apple or Uber, where having a portfolio presentation that’s visually branded in the company’s collateral scores you points, Amazon ( especially AWS) doesn’t seem to care about that. They value a clean presentation, but the rubric your interviewer will be grading you on won’t look for that. Instead, it’ll assess you on depth and variety of projects, how you manage time while presenting, and your general presentation skills.

Some topics can include:

• Past projects
• Persona based design
• Usability labs
• Metrics
• Handling complexity
• Design systems experience

Recent questions can include:

• Tell me about your recent projects.
• What’s your design process?
• Do you have any human factors background?
• How comfortable are you with conducting usability labs?
• How do you use personas in journey mapping?
• What are the differences between proto persona and persona?
• How do you collaborate with others in complex design systems?

Manager conversations

You’ll have at least two, separate 30-minute conversations with senior managers on the design team. Each manager will have a different set of questions derived from the Amazon Leadership Principles, so make sure you’re prepared to speak to those.

Recent questions can include:

• Describe a time when you used external trends to improve your own company’s products or services. (Principle: Insist on the Highest Standards)
• Tell me about your most significant accomplishment. (Principle: Think Big)
• Give an example of something that you’ve worked on to improve your overall work effectiveness. (Principle: Learn and Be Curious)
• Talk about a time you used data to come up with data-driven statistics, and how you presented your findings. (Principle: Dive Deep)
• Describe a situation when you disagreed with your manager, and how you handled that. (Principle: Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit)
• How have you balanced data insights with leadership instincts when driving critical team decisions? (Principle: Are Right, A Lot)
• Give an example of a complex problem you solved with a simple solution. (Principle: Invent and Simplify)
• Which leadership principle do you least resonate with?

Functional exercise

This 40-minute whiteboard challenge will assess how you handle ambiguity and process new information as you get it. The problem you’ll face won’t be practical to your work, or even to Amazon, similar to how companies like Dropbox approach case-studies. If you’re interviewing online, your recruiter will send you a Bluescape link , so make sure you’ve got it set up in advance.

Your interviewer will be looking to see how you gather information from a customer, and what kind of clarifying questions you ask. Don’t jump straight  into making wireframes. Before you get into it, make sure you understand the customer’s needs, and are designing in a user-centric way before you begin to roadmap. Amazon interviewers also recommend outlining  your design solution and workflow plans before you begin creating wireframes.

Recent questions can include:

• Design a kayak rental service.
• Estimate the market size of the bike market in the United States.

Bar Raiser

In the final stage of your Amazon interview loop, you’ll have an one-hour interview by a Bar Raiser, an interviewer specifically trained to be an SME on the Leadership Principles. The Bar Raiser will assess to see that you’re aligned with the Leadership Principles from the top down. Your interviewer will be given a bank of questions based on two or three randomly selected Leadership Principles. By sheer force of its standardization, experts agree that the Amazon Bar Raiser is the toughest behavioral interview in tech (read our LP guide for our approach).

Emphasize your impact. Rejected candidates often get too in the weeds explaining the nitty-gritty of the problem.o As you plan out your answers, make sure that at least 80% of your response explains what you did, not just the problem you were solving. For senior-level roles, you should be able to showcase impact beyond your  product or team. Key evidence of impact includes specific metrics,  dollar amounts, , or an anecdote about a more relational win, like those focused on customer satisfaction.

Recent questions can include:

• Tell me about a time when you faced a conflict while on a team. (Principle: Customer Obsession; Earn Trust)
• Tell me about a project you worked on that was not successful. What would you do differently? (Principle: Ownership)
• Tell me about a time when you made a decision with limited data(Principle: Are Right, A Lot; Deliver Results)
• Why UX? (Principle: Learn and Be Curious)
• Give an example of a calculated risk that you have taken where speed was critical. (Principle: Bias for Action)
• Tell me about a time when you worked on a project with a tight deadline. (Principle: Insist on the Highest Standards; Deliver Results)

Additional resources

• Take our Portfolio Reviews course to prepare for your onsite portfolio presentation.
• Learn about Tips for Acing Amazon Leadership Principles Questions.
• Get expert coaching from UX interviewers at Amazon.
• Prep with mock interviews on the most commonly asked UX questions.
• Hone your basics by taking our UX/Product Design Interviews course.

FAQs

How should I prepare for a UX designer interview at Amazon?

• Research recently asked interview questions at Amazon for UX product designers.
• Try taking our Brainstorming Product Ideas course to prepare for the functional exercise.
• Read Amazon’s annual report to get a sense of their future priorities.
• Familiarize yourself with Amazon’s Leadership Principles. You’ll be explicitly asked about these principles throughout the interview process.

How much do Amazon UX Designers earn?

The average total compensation across levels for senior UX designers at Amazon is:

• L4 (Designer 1): $141K
• L5 (Designer 2): $189K
• L6 (Designer 3): $276K
• L7 (Principal Designer): $387K

How long is the Amazon UX Designer interview process?

Typically, the interview process for UX designer roles at Amazon lasts between 4–6 weeks, with some delays being reported for more senior roles.

Does Amazon have an RTO policy?

As of this writing, Amazon has a full return-to-office (RTO) policy in place. Depending on the capacity of the nearest office location, though, you might have a little flexibility. Talk to your recruiter if you get an offer, and read job listings carefully.

If I get rejected, how long should I wait before re-applying?

Some roles at Amazon have a six-month cooling-off period. If you get rejected, check in with your recruiter to see how long you should wait before you apply again.