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Got the offer

6M SDE Intern at Amazon

Difficulty
Process took
3-4 Weeks
Rounds
2
Format
Remote
Applied via
Company Website

How it went

A few things to keep in mind: -->Don’t jump straight to the optimal solution. Start with a simple/brute-force approach, dry-run it on a small example, and explain why you thought of that first. -->Be explicit about time and space complexities at every stage (brute → improved → optimal). It’s very, very important. -->Communicate clearly: restate the problem, confirm constraints(very important), call out edge cases, and narrate your reasoning. Validate with edge cases (empty/single element, duplicates, negatives/large values, off-by-one, etc.)

What they would tell you

A few things to keep in mind: -->Don’t jump straight to the optimal solution. Start with a simple/brute-force approach, dry-run it on a small example, and explain why you thought of that first. -->Be explicit about time and space complexities at every stage (brute → improved → optimal). It’s very, very important. -->Communicate clearly: restate the problem, confirm constraints(very important), call out edge cases, and narrate your reasoning. Validate with edge cases (empty/single element, duplicates, negatives/large values, off-by-one, etc.)

How to prepare

I got this opportunity through Amazon Hackon Season-5, where our team got selected into top-130 teams out of 50,000+ teams. Regarding preparation, I redeemed Leetcode premium through LC coins, and practiced recently asked questions at amazon before the interview, it really helped me a lot, apart from that i was already grinding DSA from the past 1 year giving so many contests, so it was not that much hard for me.

Their background

I'm a final year undergrad from Tier-1 NIT, have solved nearly 1500 problems on leetcode over the past 1 year.

Round by round

  1. 1

    Online Assessment (OA)120 min

    OA Details: Duration ~2 hours. Part 1: 2 DSA questions on HackerRank (no camera). I solved 1 completely and ~80% of the second. Part 2: WorkStyle Assessment (this was honestly frustrating, but the key was to remain calm and answer intelligently).

  2. 2

    Technical Round60 min

    The interviewer joined on time, introduced himself, and asked me to introduce myself. Without asking about my resume, projects, or Leadership principles(LP's), he directly shared a live coding link. He asked me two LeetCode medium problems:

    • Asteroid Collision

    • Minimize the Maximum Difference of Pairs For each question:

    • I first explained the brute force approach.

    • Then coded it, and wrote time and space complexities below the code.

    • Next, he asked me to optimize the solution. I discussed the optimized approach, dry-ran it on a test case, handled his counter-questions, and then coded the optimized version too.

    • Again, I mentioned TC/SC and dry-ran a test case. He looked satisfied with my explanations. Pro Tip: Write clean, modular, and readable code. Use helper functions wherever possible. It helps you a lot during dry runs and leaves a great impression on the interviewer.

    • Surprisingly, the interview had no technical discussion beyond DSA, no project questions, no internship discussion, and no LP questions. At the end, he only asked if I had any questions. I asked him two, and the interview wrapped up in 55 minutes.

What came up

MediumRemote0 1 years

A candidate-reported account, lightly edited. Interview processes change by team and date.

Sources