Status: 4 years of experience, currently working with a mid sized company in Bengaluru.
Position: SDE2 at Amazon
Location: Bengaluru, KA
Interview Date: May 2020 - June 2020

Interview Process:

Online Assessment -> 2 Medium LeetCode Questions, concepts used in those problems were similar to problems I had solved.

Virtual On-Site Interviews:

Round 1 -> 1 Coding Question, was a Medium Difficulty LeetCode[LC] question. Was able to provide a solution for the same but couldn't come up with most optimal solution in expected time. Hence, coded the solution that I proposed. This was in my opinion not the best of rounds out of all.

1 Leadership Principle[LP] Question.

Round 2 -> 2 Coding Questions, first one was a Medium Difficulty LC question based on Djisktra Algorithm. Was able to come up with the optimal solution & wrote the correct working code as well. Second one was a Hard Difficulty LC question based on Dynamic Programming, was expected to discuss the approach along with time & space complexity analysis of this. Was able to explain the correct approach.

Round 3 -> 2 LP Questions & 1 Low Level Design Problem

Round 4 -> 1 System Design Problem

Round 5 -> 3 Leadership Principles Questions

Post this, I received a call from HR & she mentioned they would like to have another coding round as everything else seems to be fine. Though, one of the panel members has asked for the same.

Round 6 -> 3 Coding Questions. First one was a pretty good Medium Difficulty Level question based on Binary Search. Was able to provide the optimal solution & coded the same as well. Second one was a simple & tricky string question, was only expected to discuss the approach. Was able to come up with the solution. Third one was again a Medium Difficulty level question based on Topological Sort implementation, was able to give the solution for the same & wrote the correct working code as well.

Till now, this was the best round of interview I had.

Result: Post the final round, heard back from the HR within 2 business days that I have been shortlisted for this position & in another 2 days she sent the offer letter post our discussions.

Following are a few things I would like to share about my preparation & interview experience:

• It has been a long journey of learning & rejections before I got this offer, I am very happy to share this with the community as with every rejection I faced, it made me feel strongly that I need to learn more & hence I never gave up. With this I would like to emphasise, daily practice can literally do wonders & I am experiencing it now. Now, I have been on a 100 days streak of problem solving & it's growing day by day.
• I used to practice on other websites before I got know about LeetCode, since I have been coding on LC it has changed the way my preparation has taken off. This is maybe because here even after working out a solution for a problem, the discuss section provided me with much better thoughts & solutions for the same problem. This really helped me think in multiple dimensions given a new problem. Thanks a lot to LeetCode community! You people are changing lives here!
• Lastly, I would like to emphasise on the Leadership Principle Questions asked in the Amazon interviews as I have read lot of post & comments on LeetCode where people are asking & worried about this particular round. It was my first time & simply followed the rule we follow everywhere of being prepared. As suggested by my recruiter, I had taken the list of LP's & prepared a story or 2 for each of them to be able to provide real context & stories if asked about that LP. I think this helped me to be confident in that round & tell answer using stories as was expected.

Thanks a lot to the LeetCode community! Hoping to contribute more to it!

P.S.: Compensation Details: https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/729693/amazon-sde2-bengaluru

Good Luck to everyone preparing for interviews!