Amazon SDE-1 Interview Experience — 2026

Sharing my recent Amazon SDE-1 interview experience. Hopefully this helps someone preparing for the process.

Background & Experience

I graduated in 2025.

I worked at a service-based company for 6 months as an intern and then 1 year as a full-time software engineer.

Process

The process had:

• Online Assessment
• 3 Technical Rounds
• 1 Leadership Principles Round

The whole process took around a month.

My interview timeline was roughly:

• Round 1: Early August
• Round 2: ~2 days later
• Round 3: ~1 week later
• LP round: ~1 week later
• Offer call: ~9 days after the final round

Technical Rounds

All three technical rounds had a strong focus on DSA, along with LLD/conceptual discussions.

Round 1

The DSA problem was around the medium-hard level.

There were also LLD-related questions.

Round 2

This had a hard DSA problem.

The discussion involved the solution and complexity, along with follow-ups, along with discussion on low level design concepts.

Round 3

Although it was termed as the GenAi round. The round involved a hard DSA problem, followed by discussion of alternative approaches, different data structures, and their complexities. along with discussion on Gen AI, how do you leverage GenAi in your daily work, that was the core theme of the discussion

Overall, the technical rounds were not just about getting an accepted solution. There was quite a bit of discussion around the reasoning and alternatives.

Leadership Principles Round

The final round was mainly focused on Amazon Leadership Principles.

It was a behavioral round based on previous experiences.

I prepared my stories beforehand and tried to keep the answers based on things I had actually worked on.

Preparation

I started serious DSA preparation around the start of February this year.

My preparation mainly involved solving problems on LeetCode, GFG and CSES, along with participating in contests.

I covered topics like:

• Arrays
• Sliding Window
• Binary Search
• Recursion
• Trees
• Graphs
• Heaps
• DSU
• DP
• Monotonic Stack
• Segment Trees
• Tries
• Fenwick Trees

I also prepared LLD alongside DSA.

I used AlgoMaster.io for studying LLD, and CodeStoryWithMIK and Gemini for understanding concepts and upsolving problems.

Final Result

I received the offer for SDE-1.

Hope this helps someone preparing for Amazon.

A small note for anyone preparing

Don't feel lost or defeated if you're struggling with DSA right now.

I gave an Amazon interview last year as well, in September, and was rejected in the first round. I also got rejected by two other companies around that time.

At that point, I wasn't very good at DSA.

I started preparing seriously around the start of February this year, and it took a few months of consistent practice to see a real difference.

For me, solving around 4–5 problems a day consistently helped a lot. It doesn't happen overnight. Keep doing the work and give yourself a few months.

A few things that helped me:

• Be consistent with problem solving. I tried doing 4–5 problems a day.
• Give contests. They make a huge difference because you're solving unfamiliar problems under time pressure. If you can't participate in a live contest, give virtual contests.
• Do mock interviews. I would recommend doing 2–3 mock interviews with friends before your actual interviews. It makes a big difference in getting comfortable with explaining your thought process and solving problems while someone is watching.

If you're struggling right now, don't assume that you're just bad at DSA. It takes time.

Keep going.