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Amazon Engineering Manager Interview Questions

Review this list of 43 Amazon Engineering Manager interview questions and answers verified by hiring managers and candidates.
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    298 answers
    Video answer for 'What's your favorite product and why?'
    +287

    "Clarify "What do you mean by favorite product? Are you thinking specifically hardware, software, or a feature within those, or something non-electronic? Dealer's Choice. "Are you asking why I love this product, or to explain why this product is a market leader independent of how i feel about it? Talk about why YOU love this product. Rephrase Question With all that in mind, i want to rephrase the question. "What is your favorite software product and what features in this product"

    Tim W. - "Clarify "What do you mean by favorite product? Are you thinking specifically hardware, software, or a feature within those, or something non-electronic? Dealer's Choice. "Are you asking why I love this product, or to explain why this product is a market leader independent of how i feel about it? Talk about why YOU love this product. Rephrase Question With all that in mind, i want to rephrase the question. "What is your favorite software product and what features in this product"See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    Product Design
    +4 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    94 answers
    +90

    "My approach to dealing with difficult stakeholders has always been: Engage - Directly engage with the stakeholder, meet or chat Listen - Listen to what they have to say, patiently. Understand - Understand their POV, even if it is impossible at some times Ask - Ask clarifying questions. Why? When? What? Engage again - Keep them in the loop until there is closure For example, we were in the final stages of a very important, strategic project for our organization. I was leading th"

    Jane D. - "My approach to dealing with difficult stakeholders has always been: Engage - Directly engage with the stakeholder, meet or chat Listen - Listen to what they have to say, patiently. Understand - Understand their POV, even if it is impossible at some times Ask - Ask clarifying questions. Why? When? What? Engage again - Keep them in the loop until there is closure For example, we were in the final stages of a very important, strategic project for our organization. I was leading th"See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    Behavioral
    +8 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    106 answers
    Video answer for 'Tell me about a time you made a mistake.'
    +95

    "Let me tell you about a time where a website I managed suddenly showed slow performance and the mistake on our side was it was unnoticed until a user reported the issue to management. As a PM for that project, I took full responsibility of the situation and worked with the engineering team to quickly resolve it. This mistake taught me the importance of focusing and monitoring non functional requirements as well in addition to new feature development /adoption where I was mostly spending my time"

    Sreenisha S. - "Let me tell you about a time where a website I managed suddenly showed slow performance and the mistake on our side was it was unnoticed until a user reported the issue to management. As a PM for that project, I took full responsibility of the situation and worked with the engineering team to quickly resolve it. This mistake taught me the importance of focusing and monitoring non functional requirements as well in addition to new feature development /adoption where I was mostly spending my time"See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    Behavioral
    +10 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    27 answers
    +23

    "Firstly, it's mentioned "ideas" & not "idea". I would like to get more context. Is it one idea or multiple ideas on a roadmap? Is it tied to the same broader goal? Is this a pattern where team has been disagreeing with ideas for a while? If it's the 1st, then it's fine, we can look into it. If it's the 2nd, then it raises a bit of a concern. Gonna assume it's the 1st. I'd probably get clarity by asking questions To the team: Which idea/s are being disagreed upon? Are all member"

    Debajyoti B. - "Firstly, it's mentioned "ideas" & not "idea". I would like to get more context. Is it one idea or multiple ideas on a roadmap? Is it tied to the same broader goal? Is this a pattern where team has been disagreeing with ideas for a while? If it's the 1st, then it's fine, we can look into it. If it's the 2nd, then it raises a bit of a concern. Gonna assume it's the 1st. I'd probably get clarity by asking questions To the team: Which idea/s are being disagreed upon? Are all member"See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    Behavioral
    +1 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    34 answers
    +28

    "We had a huge launch on September 1st of this year where we completely redesigned our application from the grounds up and also migrated to a new platform (React.JS). This project took us 8 months and the launch was a huge deal for the team. Unfortunately the launch wasn't as smooth as we expected and despite doing multiple rounds of QA, some major issues cropped up in the core part of the app right after launch and our client was quite upset since it was disrupting their day-to-day workflow. "

    Aabid S. - "We had a huge launch on September 1st of this year where we completely redesigned our application from the grounds up and also migrated to a new platform (React.JS). This project took us 8 months and the launch was a huge deal for the team. Unfortunately the launch wasn't as smooth as we expected and despite doing multiple rounds of QA, some major issues cropped up in the core part of the app right after launch and our client was quite upset since it was disrupting their day-to-day workflow. "See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    Behavioral
    +7 more
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  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    47 answers
    Video answer for 'Tell me about a time when you worked on a project with a tight deadline.'
    +43

    "A clarifying question: Is this question asking about when I met a tight deadline in a project or how did I manage a project that had a tight deadline? The answer uploaded to this question is good, I would also add 'creating a critical path from overall project schedule and then making sure that none of the deliverables in the critical path are sacrificed in order to meet the tight deadline' as an action taken."

    Ushita S. - "A clarifying question: Is this question asking about when I met a tight deadline in a project or how did I manage a project that had a tight deadline? The answer uploaded to this question is good, I would also add 'creating a critical path from overall project schedule and then making sure that none of the deliverables in the critical path are sacrificed in order to meet the tight deadline' as an action taken."See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    Behavioral
    +5 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    126 answers
    Video answer for 'Tell me about yourself.'
    +118

    "As you know, this is the most important question for any interview. Here is a structure I like to follow, Start with 'I'm currently a SDE/PM/TPM etc with XYZ company.... ' Mention how you got into PM/TPM/SDE field (explaining your journey) Mention 1 or 2 accomplishments Mention what you do outside work (blogging, volunteer etc) Share why are you looking for a new role Ask the interviewer if they have any questions or will like to dive deep into any of your experience"

    Bipin R. - "As you know, this is the most important question for any interview. Here is a structure I like to follow, Start with 'I'm currently a SDE/PM/TPM etc with XYZ company.... ' Mention how you got into PM/TPM/SDE field (explaining your journey) Mention 1 or 2 accomplishments Mention what you do outside work (blogging, volunteer etc) Share why are you looking for a new role Ask the interviewer if they have any questions or will like to dive deep into any of your experience"See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    Behavioral
    +17 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    59 answers
    Video answer for 'Design Instagram.'
    +53

    "Very well done."

    Vijay M. - "Very well done."See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    Product Design
    +3 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    8 answers
    +5

    "One of the most challenging situations was joining a new startup to realize that they did not figure out their core product and that customers were dissatisfied and leaving in droves. I worked together with the leaders to understand the core issue and the reasons that the customers were leaving. Then together with the team, we set out to map out those core issues and the gaps that we had in our product. We then worked towards designing a new solution to address those gaps and build an MVP. W"

    WaterBuffalo - "One of the most challenging situations was joining a new startup to realize that they did not figure out their core product and that customers were dissatisfied and leaving in droves. I worked together with the leaders to understand the core issue and the reasons that the customers were leaving. Then together with the team, we set out to map out those core issues and the gaps that we had in our product. We then worked towards designing a new solution to address those gaps and build an MVP. W"See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    Behavioral
    +5 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    60 answers
    Video answer for 'What is the project you are most proud of?'
    +53

    "I was working for my friend building streams at venues across the Chicago land area for FGC (fighting game tournaments), I adjusted and engineered his equipment to be set up permanently that's until covid came around at least. I used OBS to give visual appearances to stream watchers. So we're talking about subscribe, follow, and donation notifications and things of that nature for viewers to know they contributed in one of those ways. I set up proper sign-up scheduling for participants to lock t"

    Ayinde B. - "I was working for my friend building streams at venues across the Chicago land area for FGC (fighting game tournaments), I adjusted and engineered his equipment to be set up permanently that's until covid came around at least. I used OBS to give visual appearances to stream watchers. So we're talking about subscribe, follow, and donation notifications and things of that nature for viewers to know they contributed in one of those ways. I set up proper sign-up scheduling for participants to lock t"See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    Behavioral
    +13 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    4 answers
    Video answer for 'Tell me about a time you made a bold and difficult decision.'
    +1

    "Scenario - I had joined a product in my current company as a PM midway through its development. It is a very sensitive product with a major public services company. As the product was close to its go-live date, it had to go through many checks and many signoffs. A couple of them were through data policy department and the platform department, of which we were using all of the components for our product. We needed policy sign off to authorise the use of data to understand user interactions and"

    Umang S. - "Scenario - I had joined a product in my current company as a PM midway through its development. It is a very sensitive product with a major public services company. As the product was close to its go-live date, it had to go through many checks and many signoffs. A couple of them were through data policy department and the platform department, of which we were using all of the components for our product. We needed policy sign off to authorise the use of data to understand user interactions and"See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    Behavioral
    +1 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    4 answers

    "For any project based questions, it is important to structure your response clearly, showcasing your thought process, technical skills, problem-solving abilities, and how your work added value. Besides the STAR method, you can also use this kind of framework: 1. Start by selecting a relevant project (related to the role) Give the project background and what specific problem it solved. 2. Align the project's objective and your role Be specific about your role: were you the le"

    Malay K. - "For any project based questions, it is important to structure your response clearly, showcasing your thought process, technical skills, problem-solving abilities, and how your work added value. Besides the STAR method, you can also use this kind of framework: 1. Start by selecting a relevant project (related to the role) Give the project background and what specific problem it solved. 2. Align the project's objective and your role Be specific about your role: were you the le"See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    Behavioral
    +9 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    12 answers
    Video answer for 'Tell me about a time when you raised the bar.'
    +8

    "Please provide a transcript. One grasps 150 words in a video, but can grasp 250 words when reading text."

    Astro S. - "Please provide a transcript. One grasps 150 words in a video, but can grasp 250 words when reading text."See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    Behavioral
    +2 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    5 answers
    +2

    " To clarify on what we are trying to solve for and get the definition of a distributed scheduler straight . So A Distributed Scheduler refers to a system that can handle job scheduling and execution in a scalable and fault-tolerant manner by distributing the workload across multiple servers or nodes. we will make some assumptions with the design , as follows: we will assume 10,000 QPS for job submissions and should be able query for jobs status . Job execution should have minimal latency"

    Scott S. - " To clarify on what we are trying to solve for and get the definition of a distributed scheduler straight . So A Distributed Scheduler refers to a system that can handle job scheduling and execution in a scalable and fault-tolerant manner by distributing the workload across multiple servers or nodes. we will make some assumptions with the design , as follows: we will assume 10,000 QPS for job submissions and should be able query for jobs status . Job execution should have minimal latency"See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    System Design
    +1 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    15 answers
    Video answer for 'Design a reservation and payment system for a parking garage.'
    +12

    "Since there is a need for the data to be accurate and consistent without any latency to allocate a spot, can't the data be synchronously synced to replicas after every write as the number of writes are not many per min, instead of read lock phenomena Let me know if i am on a wrong thought here."

    Chitapuram N. - "Since there is a need for the data to be accurate and consistent without any latency to allocate a spot, can't the data be synchronously synced to replicas after every write as the number of writes are not many per min, instead of read lock phenomena Let me know if i am on a wrong thought here."See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    System Design
    +2 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    11 answers
    +8

    "In my time at Snapp! I was in charge of communicating the product backlog to our CEO. We had a shared Jira board that he had access to and I made specifically for him. One day he saw me in the office and said he doesn’t know anything about our backlog and that’s because I failed to communicate with him. I got upset at first because of the fact that I made the dashboard exclusively for him. But I tried to ask questions to understand his point of view in depth. He then mentioned he doesn't have t"

    Ra R. - "In my time at Snapp! I was in charge of communicating the product backlog to our CEO. We had a shared Jira board that he had access to and I made specifically for him. One day he saw me in the office and said he doesn’t know anything about our backlog and that’s because I failed to communicate with him. I got upset at first because of the fact that I made the dashboard exclusively for him. But I tried to ask questions to understand his point of view in depth. He then mentioned he doesn't have t"See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    Behavioral
    +9 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    4 answers
    +1

    "I tried solving this problem and here is the recorded video for the answer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1tOkeQjyI4 And here is the link to Excalidraw board - https://excalidraw.com/#json=uabNFHcZm5qNh8CInMvyh,Wn9Vf1ZhGdl_iBCQYFkYdw"

    Rjj - "I tried solving this problem and here is the recorded video for the answer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1tOkeQjyI4 And here is the link to Excalidraw board - https://excalidraw.com/#json=uabNFHcZm5qNh8CInMvyh,Wn9Vf1ZhGdl_iBCQYFkYdw"See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    System Design
    +1 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    5 answers
    +2

    "Step 1: Clarifying the Problem Scope We will focus on designing the leaderboard for Dream11 with these assumptions: Registered teams: 100,000 users are actively participating and ranked. Real-time updates: Leaderboard updates frequently as players accumulate points based on live sports events. Multiple leagues: Each user can participate in different leagues, so we will need to maintain a separate leaderboard for each league. Query efficiency: Users frequently"

    Ramendra S. - "Step 1: Clarifying the Problem Scope We will focus on designing the leaderboard for Dream11 with these assumptions: Registered teams: 100,000 users are actively participating and ranked. Real-time updates: Leaderboard updates frequently as players accumulate points based on live sports events. Multiple leagues: Each user can participate in different leagues, so we will need to maintain a separate leaderboard for each league. Query efficiency: Users frequently"See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    System Design
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    13 answers
    Video answer for 'Design a rate limiter.'
    +9

    "Rate Limiter is to limit the number of request from a particular IP Address. Rate limiter will block the IP address to reduce the load on server. It should be highly available and handle concurrent requests. Blocked IP addresses should be kept in a pool which is present in shared cache. We need to keep threshold value after it reaches threshold value it should start blocking IP address. All these ip address to be kept in No SQL DB. Batch will run that will clear the cache and delete all the bloc"

    Ashish G. - "Rate Limiter is to limit the number of request from a particular IP Address. Rate limiter will block the IP address to reduce the load on server. It should be highly available and handle concurrent requests. Blocked IP addresses should be kept in a pool which is present in shared cache. We need to keep threshold value after it reaches threshold value it should start blocking IP address. All these ip address to be kept in No SQL DB. Batch will run that will clear the cache and delete all the bloc"See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    System Design
    +1 more
  • +2

    "Referring to https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/03/23/15-strategies-for-balancing-competing-stakeholder-priorities/?sh=7c82aa68262f Understand the conflicting priorities and align it with the goal/ objectives and the company mission. Start with the Least Common Denominator between the conflicting priorities to come to a commonality and start from there to objectively approach the next imp priority Always keep communication on and be transparent with 'equality' an"

    Pramod V. - "Referring to https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/03/23/15-strategies-for-balancing-competing-stakeholder-priorities/?sh=7c82aa68262f Understand the conflicting priorities and align it with the goal/ objectives and the company mission. Start with the Least Common Denominator between the conflicting priorities to come to a commonality and start from there to objectively approach the next imp priority Always keep communication on and be transparent with 'equality' an"See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    Behavioral
    +6 more
Showing 1-20 of 43