I recently went through the interview process for the System Development Engineer I role at Amazon (Hyderabad) and am happy to share that I was selected. The entire process was well-structured, covering a mix of data structures and algorithms, system debugging, networking fundamentals, and Amazon’s Leadership Principles. It was a great learning experience that tested both my technical depth and problem-solving mindset.

Online Assessment (OA):

• Consisted of 2 medium-level DSA questions and a few Amazon Leadership Principles–based scenario questions.

• The questions tested logical reasoning and problem-solving skills with a focus on time and space optimization.

Round 1 – DSA + Behavioral:

Coding:

• 1 Easy + 1 Medium problem.

• One was based on String Manipulation / DP (Interleaving String).

• The other question was:

    You are given a stream of data where each element arrives with a timestamp (in minutes). At any point, you should only keep elements whose timestamps fall within the last k minutes.
  
    If a new element arrives:
  
    Remove all elements older than k minutes from the current time.
  
    Return false if the same element already exists in the current window.
  
    Otherwise, insert it and return true.

Behavioral: Questions on “Insist on High Standards” and “Earn Trust.”

Round 2 – OS, Linux, and Networking + Behavioral:

Focused on Linux system debugging.

Scenario: The system is hanging, and you need to diagnose the issue.

I mentioned using commands like df -h (to check disk space), followed the output, and identified that a mounted file system was full. Discussed follow-up commands and steps to resolve the storage issue.

Networking topics covered:

• What is DNS and how it works (step-by-step resolution).

• TLS handshake flow in DNS.

• Role of HTTPS in securing communication.

Also included Amazon Leadership Principle questions.

Round 3 – Advanced DSA + Behavioral:

2 Hard-level questions:

• Alien Dictionary, where I had to determine the order of characters in an alien language based on a given dictionary of words

• The second problem was very similar to Word Ladder II, where the goal was to find all the shortest transformation sequences from a start word to an end word.

The interviewer also asked follow ups like why used BFS and not DFS. Followed by a few behavioral questions focused on problem-solving and ownership.

Round 4 – Behavioral (Leadership Principles):

A pure LP round with in-depth discussions around:

• A time when you built out a process.

• A time you faced a complex problem.

• A situation where you had to quickly learn something new to deliver results.

• A challenging project and how you handled it.

Final Verdict: Selected 🎉