I applied through a job portal and received the Online Assessment (OA) link after a couple of weeks. After clearing the OA, I was invited for a face-to-face interview at the Bangalore office.
📅 23rd May 2026 – Online
🧑💻 Round 1 – DSA
Questions:
- 🌳 Similar to Print Zig-Zag Binary Tree
- 🎒 Variation of the Knapsack problem
This was a pretty easy round for me. I solved both questions within 30 minutes.
For the second question, I started with a recursive solution and then optimized it using memoization. We also discussed the time and space complexity.
The interviewer then asked 2 Leadership Principle (LP) questions, which I answered confidently.
🟢 Self Verdict: Strong Hire
🏗️ Round 2 – LLD
Question:
- 📦 Design Amazon Delivery Estimation Service
This was the toughest round for me.
The interview started with 2 LP questions, which I messed up. After that, the interviewer gave me the problem statement and asked me to identify the functional and non-functional requirements.
I struggled significantly with this part and, even after receiving several hints, I was not able to convince the interviewer that I had a solid understanding of the problem.
The interview ended after that.
I knew this round had gone badly.
🔴 Self Verdict: No Hire
After this round, I was informed that the remaining rounds would be conducted virtually and that I should be prepared for them.
At that point, I was convinced that I had probably not made it through.
However, a couple of weeks later, I received another email for an interview with the same team, scheduled for 13th June 2026.
This time, I prepared extensively for system design. 📚
📅 13th June 2026 – Online
🏛️ Round 3 – HLD
Question:
- ⚙️ Design a Job Scheduler System with dependent jobs
The interviewer was an SDM with more than 20 years of experience.
This was a completely new problem for me, but I started by discussing the requirements and constraints with the interviewer. That discussion helped make the problem much easier to approach.
We mainly discussed:
- 🔄 Kahn's Algorithm
- 📨 Message Queues
- 🗂️ Partitioning
- 🗄️ Database design
- 💥 Failure handling
- 🔁 Retry mechanisms with exponential backoff
- 📊 ELK setup
- 📈 Horizontal scaling
- 🔗 Handling dependent jobs
I was quite confident throughout this round.
Towards the end, the interviewer asked me 4 Leadership Principle questions, which I answered well.
At the end, I asked for feedback on my design. He said:
💬 "No design is good or bad in a design interview. You just need to meet the functional and non-functional requirements. We did that, so it's a good design."
That gave me a good indication that the round had gone well.
🟢 Self Verdict: Hire
I did fumble at a few points, so I didn't consider it a Strong Hire.
🧠 Round 4 – Bar Raiser DSA
Question:
- 🪢 Variation of the Min Cost to Connect Ropes problem
The interviewer initially gave me a very long problem statement involving Amazon Alexa devices.
The statement was quite vague, and the first part of the interview was challenging because I was trying to understand exactly what was being asked.
There was also some wording around the "maximum of minimum", which initially made me think that the problem might involve binary search.
The interviewer eventually gave me a hint, after which the problem became much simpler.
I recognized the pattern and implemented the solution using a min-heap fairly quickly. ⚡
We discussed:
- ⏱️ Time complexity
- 💾 Space complexity
- 🛣️ A follow-up to print the exact path of the devices that would be merged
The interviewer then asked 3–4 Leadership Principle questions.
Overall, I felt the round went well.
🟢 Self Verdict: Hire
The only concern was that I had taken one hint.
⚠️ Important: Try not to take hints during the interview if possible. The recruiter specifically mentioned that hints can be considered negatively during the debrief.
🏗️ Round 5 – Additional LLD
Since the interviewers did not have enough evidence from my first LLD round, an additional LLD round was scheduled.
⏱️ Duration: ~1 hour 45 minutes
Topics discussed:
- 🎬 Design something similar to a Netflix Subscription System
- 🔄 Migrate users from an old database to a new database while keeping the same API
- 🔀 Saga Pattern
- 🧩 Saga Steps, Context, and Orchestrator classes
This was a very exhausting round, especially because the in-person interviews were quite long and this was already towards the end of the day.
I did my best on the Netflix subscription design, but I struggled with the user migration problem and the Saga Orchestrator design.
🟡 Self Verdict: Lean Hire
📩 Final Result
About a week later, on 19th June 2026, I received the rejection email.
Looking back, I believe the main reason was my performance in the LLD rounds, especially the first LLD round.
Although I performed well in DSA and HLD, I wasn't able to demonstrate the required depth and structure in LLD.
📊 My Self Assessment
| Round | Area | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| 🧑💻 Round 1 | DSA | 🟢 Strong Hire |
| 🏗️ Round 2 | LLD | 🔴 No Hire |
| 🏛️ Round 3 | HLD | 🟢 Hire |
| 🧠 Round 4 | Bar Raiser DSA | 🟢 Hire |
| 🏗️ Round 5 | Additional LLD | 🟡 Lean Hire |
Despite the rejection, the process taught me a lot about Amazon interviews and where I needed to improve.
Keep preparing, keep improving, and keep coding! 💪
Check out this too https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/8555479/amazon-sde-2-interview-experience-septem-uc29/
