Amazon interview questions

Amazon Interview Questions

Sumit Arora | sumit@thecareertools.com

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: This presentation doesn’t provide detailed knowledge or concepts of any technical items. It’s
assumes that a candidate will refer to appropriate text books based perception. Moreover, this presentation explains the thought process,
reasoning with job Interviews and provides several types of examples, which helps a candidate prepare for Job Interviews, especially in
regards to technical companies.
The author makes no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and
specifically disclaims all warranties, including without limitation warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. The fact that an organization
or web site is referred to in this work as a citation and/or a potential source of further information does not mean that the author endorses
the information the organization or web site may provide or the recommendations it may make. Furthermore, readers should be aware that
Internet web sites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read.
Sumit Arora | sumit@thecareertools.com

REMEMBER:THE
PARAMETERS

TECHNICAL

INTERVIEW

DEPENDS

ON

VARIOUS

- From employer side: job title,
responsibility, department, project
type, technology type, skills type,
years of experience, mind set of
interviewer/interviewers,
immediate requirements, firm
decision for hire-nohire and many
more.
- From candidate side : the way CV (resume) was presented, the
way the candidate carried the technical/non-technical discussion,
Job Title, Past Experience, thought process, technical thoughts
presentation/participation and many more )

WHICH JOB
POSITIONS
AMAZON
MAJORLY
HIRE/INTERVIE
W?

Amazon
Majorly
HIRE/INTERVIEW-1
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ENGINEER
Amazon operates some of the largest-scale transactional software on the Internet. Our
software development team ensures that these complex distributed systems do not fail,
without slowing the speed of innovation in a loosely-coupled software development
environment. We relentlessly focus on customer experience by eliminating sources of risk that
cause systems to fail. Come join us and learn how complex systems operate at scale, what goes
bump in the middle of the night and how to keep it all running smoothly 24x7

www.thecareertools.com

AMAZON
Majorly
HIRE/INTERVIEW-2
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ENGINEER, TEST
Do you like learning complex software systems? Do you enjoy breaking complex software
systems? Can you build automated test systems to break complex software systems more
efficiently? If so, the Website Application Platform QA team is looking for an SDET to join
our small fast-paced enthusiastic team. We need someone who is willing to learn fast,
raise the quality bar for many different teams of developers working on accelerated
schedules, and who can maintain a sense of humor under pressure. We focus on the
quality of our products by both testing and influencing the development processes. This
would include building test frameworks, driving the invention and adoption of tools and
advanced test methodologies.

AMAZON Interview
Questions Divided In
Following EIGHT Areas ?
Asked by multiple interviewers
in multiple rounds [ HR
Interview, Programming-Test,
Phone Interview-1,Phone
Interview-2,Face-To-Face
Interviews(~3-4), Hiring
Manager Interview[~1-2]/ ~4560 Mins, InterviewStreet]


1
2

…
8
7

1

General
Areas Qs
-Please tell me about yourself?,
-What is your most efficient technical skills ?,
-Which technical area you are trying to improve?,
-What type of job or role you looking for ? ,
-How do you feel that such job fits to you ? ,
-Why did you opt for this job ? ,
-Why you are looking for a job ?,
-Why Should Facebook Hire You? and much more...
RELEVANT TO THE PRESENTED CV/RESUME
8

2

PAST
EXPERIENCE
AREAS Qs
-Best Practices – Effective While At Work
-Career Aspirations: Expectations From Work,
-Career Movement: Past Work Experience,
-Coding: Largest Code Project,
-Programming: Largest Piece Of Code,
-Technical Skills: Encountered Technically Complex Problems,
-Work Interest: Learning From Work and much more...

9

3

Algorithms Qs
-Sorting Approaches
-Searching Approaches
-Brute-Force Approach
-Greedy Approaches
-Task Scheduling Algorithm
-Huffman Codes
-Longest Common Subsequence
-Naïve String Matching
-Rabin-Karp Algorithm
-NP-Completeness Algorithms
-Red-Black Trees
-B-Trees,
-Graph Traversals
-Hash Tables and much more...

STANDARD CONCEPTS BUT TRICKY WAYS

10

4

Coding Qs
-Compress String
-Partition The Array Of Balls
-Adding Two N-Bit Binary Integers
-Trie Data Structure To Store Words
-Algorithm To Do Wild Card String Matching
-Convert A BST Into A Linked List
-N-Ary Tree
-Graph’s Breadth First Traversal
-Shuffling A Deck Of Cards
and much more...

11

5

TECHNICAL
AREAS Qs
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

- Text Search Domain [ OR]
- Security Infrastructure Domain [
OR]
- Ranking and Relevance Domain [
EXAMPLE: OFFERED
OR]
SKILLS/TECHNICAL- Storage Domain [ OR]
DOMAIN BY A
- Natural Language Processing
PROFESSIONAL
Domain [ OR]
-SOMETHING ELSE
In-depth understanding of the TCP/IP stack
Proficient in C and C++
Technical Qs ARE RELEVANT TO THE PRESENTED CV/RESUME
Solid understanding of the Linux operating system
A passion for developing scalable and optimized software systems
High aptitude and technology-agnostic approach to engineering.
Experience with network devices (routers, switches, load balancers) and a good
understanding of network routing protocols
Experience developing control plane software for switches or routers

12

6

TEST
AREAS Qs

-How to test a soda machine,
-Practical Test approaches,
-Test strategies,
-Test Tools,
-Note That Is Constructed Using Words,
-Kinds Of Testing Have You Done
-Forming the test cases for a given problem
-Overall thought process towards testing ?
-How do you understand the testable item to test ?
-How to define the test coverage ?
-Does it feasible to do the performance testing or load
testing or stress testing or xyz testing
and much more...

This is for “Software Engineer, Developer Tools” positions, Its additional to General
Areas,Past Experience Areas, Skills Areas, Thought Process, Technical Areas,

13

7

THOUGHT
PROCESS Qs
-How would you design a new browser?
-How will you design a new operating system?
-How would you design a railway track?
-How would you lead a team in Disneyland for entertainment activities ?
-If you are a trip organizer for a small group of people ?
-What software's a soccer player must use ?
STANDARD CONCEPTS BUT THOUGHTFUL ANSWERS
14


8

PROFESSIONAL’S
DEFINITION

-What Is Your Skill Table? ,
-On Which Type Of Industry Centric Solutions Are You Involved Or Would Like To Be
Involved? ,
-Which Job Title Closely Defines The Type Of Professional You Are Ur Expect To Be?
and much more...
15

What should be a
professional’s
approach to deal
with such interviews?
16

IN SUMMARY
[step-1]: Prepare a package of the skill items related to general
areas, past experience areas, skills areas, thought process and
other parameters.
[step-2]: Frame your package to a closely matching job title.

[step-3]: Present your package(CV, e-mail, way of talking and many
more) based on the type of company, job title and execute the job
interview.
17

SEE THE NEXT
SLIDES TO READ
IN DETAILS
18

You need to follow a very organized
and disciplined approach to prepare
for the Software Engineering Job at
AMAZON.


19

HERE IS THE
PLAN WHICH
WE FOUND
TO BE
REASONABLE

20

Actually AMAZON
follow an approach
on which they
measure the
thought process of
a candidate.

21

Amazon uses Algorithms/Data
Structures/Open-ended questions as one of
the approach to evaluate the talent.(As
those are one of the base to develop
technologies)
[If you have applied for a software engineering job.]
22

(Step-1) You should have
practical understanding of the
Algorithms (e.g. When to use
BackTracking, When to Use
Divide and Conquer, Why
Double Hashing required?,
Where Brute Force
concept can be applied?)
(100 Hours).
YOU MUST-HAVE/NEED-TO SPENT 100 HOURS OR MORE/AT-SOME-POINT-OF-TIME TO
THOUGHTFULLY UNDERSTAND SUCH CONEPTS(e.g. 4 hours for 25 days or 8 hours 12 days)
23

(Step-2): You should have
practical understanding of Data
Structures e.g. (Practical use
cases related to :when to use
circular buffer , or when to use
adjacently list or the
combination of both or
something else
to solve the problem ).
(100 Hours)

24

(Step-3) : You must practice
several coding problems to
implement the things which
learn from Step-1 , and Step-2
(choose any coding language for
the choice of yours (C, C++ or
Java or Python or PHP or any
one else )).
(100 Hours)

25

(Step-4): Solving the problem
doesn't mean just to solve it,
but to understand the best way
to solve it .(How you connect
the given solution with the
computing/memory resources
e.g. Memory/Processing Power)
(100 Hours)
26


MOST IMPORTANT ONE.

The main concept for the interview is to keep
the interview active and this requires some
action from your side.

27

MOST IMPORTANT ONE.

You need to talk.

28

MOST IMPORTANT ONE.

You need to explain.


29

MOST IMPORTANT ONE.
You need to discuss.

30

MOST IMPORTANT ONE.
You need to express your views.

31

MOST IMPORTANT ONE.
You need to understand
clearly the questions
given to you.

32

MOST IMPORTANT ONE.
You need to understand
the interviewer’s expression
and mindset to
understand those
questions.
33

MOST IMPORTANT ONE.
You might need to ask
appropriate questions
to understand the
question or any other
discussion item.

34

AND ALSO
Prepare : "Please tell me about your self"
, "Your skills related positive/negative further
interest" , Basics for the most needed
computer science concepts or anything as you
presented on your "CV/Resume".
(100 Hours)
35


ABOVE IS JUST A
SAMPLE PLAN, YOU
MAY CUSTOMIZE THE
WAY YOU WANT(E.G.
100 HOURS TO 10
HOURS OR
SOMETHING ELSE)
36

CLICK TO AMAZON, TO FIND THE
BEST BOOKS YOU MIGHT NEED.

37

BUT
ONE
BOOK
WE
WOULD LIKE TO
RECOMMEND YOU.

38

Available at www.amazon.com Paperback

39

Available at www.amazon.com for Kindle

40

Available at www.pothi.com

41

You
may
see
Its
Contents

42

sumit@thecareertools.com
51

Amazon interview questions

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