Background: B.E. in IT
Work Experience: 5.5 years in a product based MNC
Position: SDE-2 Amazon
Location: Bangalore, India
Interview Period: Feb - Mar 2021
Total rounds: 1 OA + 5 Tech Rounds

This was my third attempt at Amazon. I was rejected the first time due to my insufficient coding skills and the second time due to my design skills. I had prepared for both this time.

Cannot disclose the actual questions due to NDA :(

Interview Process:

Round 0: Online Coding Assessment - Hackerrank
Two coding questions (one easy and one medium) to be solved in 90 min. Both the questions had been asked before in Amazon OA.

Round 1: Design Round HLD (1 hour)

• Project and LP discussions - 15 min.

• Design an online game with multiple players. I cannot say which game but it was not a very tough design to come up with.

  This round went well.

Round 2: Problem Solving Round (1 hour)

• Project and LP discussions - 15 min. I tried to wrap the LPs as fast as possible so that we could have around 40 min to solve two questions.

• The first problem was an extension of finding the LCA of two nodes in a binary tree Link to the problem.

• The second problem was an extension of the House Robber problem Link to the problem.

  I was able to discuss and code the first one fully. We didn't have time to code the second one. The interviewer was satisfied with the approach. Discussed time and space complexity for both. This round went well.

Round 3: Design Round LLD (1 hour)

• Project and LP discussions - 35 min. The interviewe was taken by the Hiring Manager. I tried hard to shorten our discussions on the project and LPs but the follow-ups ate up all the time. It was out of my hands.

• Design a game. I cannot say which game but again, it was not a very tough design to think of.

  I thought this round went well too but I received feedback that they could not find relevant data points to judge me on LLD. I believe this was due to the short time we spent on the design.

Round 4: Problem Solving Round (1 hour)

• Project and LP discussions - 15 min.
• Both the problems were very famous ones. The interview mentioned that these two are famous problems and I might know the solution. But, even then he insisted I solve it. I was able to discuss and code the first one. Again, didn't get time to code the second one. Just discussed the approach and time complexities.

The next day, I received positive feedback about my problem-solving and HLD rounds but since they didn't have sufficient LLD data points, they were going to schedule another LLD round.

Round 5: Design Round LLD (1 hour)

• Project and LP discussions - 10 min. The interviewer did not follow up on the LP.

• Design a game again. I was able to come up with the design and wrote the classes and relations between them. I was not able to understand one of the follow-up questions but after a hint, I added that to my design.

  Was skeptical about this round since the recruiter had told me that it should be a bar-raiser.

After two days, I received the offer. I had made it :).

Preparation strategy:

• I started solving questions on Leetcode in July last year. This gave me a lot of exposure to the type of questions asked in big companies. To date, I have solved around 700 problems (mostly easy and medium). By the way, I still dread hard problems on Leetcode.
  Below is a snapshot of my journey on leetcode
  
• Started participating in weekly contests from around September. To be honest, I was never able to solve the hard problem during the contest. Often, I solved Q1 and Q2 within half an hour and struggled with the third one for the next hour.
• Read a lot of articles on interview experiences on Leetcode and judged me based on those.
• For design, I borrowed credentials of a on online learning platform from a friend and read their contents on both LLD and HLD. This alone gave me a lot of confidence to solve unknown design problems.
• For LPs, I prepared a document of around 15 questions and added two scenarios for each using the STAR technique. I went through them once before every interview. This helped me a lot in answering with precision and reduce time on the LPs. You should do this. This way you won't have to think about the situation because you already know it :).

Since few people might be interested in the LP scenarios, below is a list of LPs I prepared for :
Customer Obsession
1.) When you asked for customer feedback and how did you use that feedback to drive innovation and how did customer respond.
2.) When you evaluated customer experience about the product. What did you do and what was the result?

Ownership
3.) When you took on something significant outside your area of responsibility? why?
4.) When you did not think you are going to meet a deadline you promised. How did you identify the risk and convey to stakeholders?

Deliver Result
5.) When you were able to deliver an important project under a tight deadline? What sacrifices did you make to do so? How did they impact and the outcome?

Earn Trust
6.) When you received a critical feedback. What was it and what did you do?

Learn and be curious
7.) When you realized you needed a deeper matter of subject expertise to do your job well and what was the outcome.
8.) When you did not know what to do next or how to solve a challenging problem. How do learn and what were the options considered. What was the best was forward and what was the outcome?

Insist on higher standards
9.) When you refused to compromise your standards around quality and customer service? Who was the customer?
10.) When you worked you improve the quality of product of service that was already getting good customer feedback? Why did you do that and how did customer react.

Dive Deep
11.) A job that required to dig deep to get to the root-cause? How did you know you were focusing on the right things and what was the outcome?

Other General LPs
12.) Describe a time when you took a calculated risk.
13.) Describe a time when you took a shortcut.
14.) Conflit with manager in any project.
15.) Three things you are doing to improve yourself.
16.) Tell about a time when you convinced someone with your opinion and you were right.
17.) What is the most innovative work you have done?

Please let me know if you need more info. Posts like this have inspired me a lot. I bet it will be the same for you.
Never lose hope. If I cracked it, you can too. :)

Compensation details : LINK