I recently went through the Amazon SDE interview process, and here’s a breakdown of my experience.

Round 1: DSA (2 Problems)
1️⃣ Minimum Operations to Reduce an Integer to 0
Solved using an optimal approach
Focus was on choosing the right strategy (bit manipulation / greedy thinking depending on interpretation)
Discussed time complexity and edge cases clearly
2️⃣ String Matching Variant

Problem:
Given a string and a list of strings, return all strings from the list that are present as substrings.

Approach:

Started with a straightforward substring check
Discussed optimizations like:
Hashing / set-based lookups
Possibility of using Trie for scalability

💡 Focus was on clarity and handling edge cases efficiently.

🏗️ Round 2: DSA + LLD
💻 DSA Component
Follow-up problem discussion based on optimizations and edge cases
🧩 LLD: Design a Stack

I was given full flexibility to design the system.

My Design:

Used Linked List as the underlying data structure
Implemented generic stack to support any data type
Covered:
push(), pop(), peek()
Error handling (empty stack)
Clean, extensible design

💡 Discussion included trade-offs vs array-based stack and scalability considerations.

👨‍💼 Round 3: Hiring Manager (HM Round)
💻 DSA Problem

Problem:
Given k machines and n processes, assign each process:

Start with machine i % k
If busy → try (i + 1) % k, and so on

Return the machine handling the maximum number of processes.

Approach:

Simulated assignment with efficient tracking
Used appropriate data structures to manage availability and counts
📌 Deep Dive on Projects
Extensive discussion on my past projects:
Design decisions
Trade-offs
Challenges faced
Real-world impact

💡 This round heavily focused on ownership and depth.

⭐ Round 4: Leadership Principles (LP Round)

This round focused on Amazon’s Leadership Principles, including:

Ownership
Customer Obsession
Bias for Action
Dive Deep
Deliver Results

I answered using structured examples (STAR format):

Explained situations from my projects
Highlighted decision-making and impact
Showed accountability and problem-solving mindset