Top Amazon Interview Questions
(2025 Guide)
Amazon is one of the most iconic companies in the world — and for good reason. With its massive scale, relentless innovation, and obsession with customer experience, Amazon offers career-defining roles for top talent across tech, business, and operations. Whether you’re applying to AWS, Retail, Prime Video, or Alexa, your interview experience will reflect one thing above all: Amazon’s 16 Leadership Principles...
Why Amazon Interviews Are Unique
Amazon’s interviews aren’t built around puzzles or brain teasers. Instead, they assess your ability to solve real-world problems while demonstrating alignment with the company's core values — the Leadership Principles...
Roles Amazon Hires For
- Product Manager (PM): Focus on customer insights, product strategy, roadmap planning, and business metrics.
- Software Engineer (SDE): Strong focus on coding, system design, performance optimization, and ownership.
- Data Scientist / Analyst: Emphasis on modeling, metrics, experimentation, and cross-functional communication.
- Technical Program Manager (TPM): Delivery-focused, managing programs across engineering, design, and product teams.
- Operations & Biz Roles: Analytical thinking, negotiation, and bias for action in large-scale business domains.
Process Overview
The Amazon interview process typically includes 4–6 stages.
Recruiter Screen (30 min)
Background, interest, salary expectations, timeline, and intro to the process.
Phone Screen(s)
Depending on role, these may include coding (SDE), product cases (PM), or leadership stories (all roles).
Written Exercise
A one-page or two-page document testing structured writing and thinking.
Virtual or Onsite Loop
Each round is a deep dive into a different Leadership Principle and skill area.
Debrief and Bar Raiser Review
The Bar Raiser ensures consistent hiring standards and a holistic decision process.
Offer Stage
If you clear the loop, you may move directly to an offer or to team matching.
Interview Rounds
Behavioral Rounds
Almost every Amazon interview round — even for technical roles — will include behavioral questions using the STAR method.
Tip: Practice 4–6 stories from your past experience and be ready to flex them across multiple principles.
Technical/Functional Rounds
Role-dependent rounds testing product strategy, metrics, coding, system design, analytics, experimentation, or program delivery.
Tip: Know what success looks like in your domain and practice role-specific mock questions.
Interview Questions
Product / Business
- What’s a product you love from Amazon and how would you improve it?
- Describe a feature you’d remove from Amazon.com and why.
- How would you decide to sunset a product?
Technical
- Find the longest substring without repeating characters.
- Design a distributed file storage system (S3-like).
- Analyze memory usage in a log parser.
Behavioral
- Tell me about a time you failed and what you learned.
- Describe a decision you made that was unpopular.
- How do you handle vague requirements?
Evaluation Criteria
- Deep alignment with LPs — do your behaviors match their culture?
- Clarity in communication — can you tell a structured story?
- Analytical rigor — can you dive deep and surface insight?
- Ownership and autonomy — will you take charge without being told?
Preparation Tips
Write down your STAR stories: Create a bank of 6–8 stories. Practice delivering them in 2–3 minutes.
Study the LPs: Internalize not just what they are — but what they look like in action.
Use Mockmate to simulate behavioral, coding, and product rounds.
Ask clarifying questions: Amazon likes candidates who challenge assumptions.
Practice frugality: Expect questions about doing more with less — it’s core to the culture.
Amazon interviews are demanding, but fair. They reward preparation, clarity, and high ownership. If you can align your experience with their Leadership Principles and demonstrate that you care deeply about customers, you’ll stand out.
Practice Interviews with AI
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