I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon in Jan 2013
Interview
First there was a email for you to choose you available interview schedule. I chose a date about three weeks after receiving that email to get fully prepared. There are two phone interview with 45 mins each and a 15 mins break in the middle. First interviewer asked me two questions: 1. Find the only one duplicated number in an array. The idea is easy: using hashtable. 2. Print the Fibonacci sequence until current number is bigger than a MAX value. My idea is to use a while loop until meet the condition. Also there were some concepts about Java generics and Java multi-threading. The second interviewer only asked me one big question: find the longest repeated substring in a string.(e.g., "banana" -> "ana"; "I am what I am" -> "I am"). This is little tricky one and I didn't have ideas in the beginning. But I figured it out gradually with a O(n2) algorithm after he push me to speak what am I thinking. During the coding, he found some bugs and I fixed one by one. At last the codes ran perfectly.
I got the offer exactly two weeks later.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
find the longest repeated substring in a string.(e.g., "banana" -> "ana"; "I am what I am" -> "I am").
Surprisingly easy — I expected tougher questions, but the coding round felt more like a warm-up. The main challenge was a DSA problem about counting islands in a 2D grid, which led to a discussion on DFS versus BFS and handling large grids. Funny enough, I had revisited that exact type of question while prepping on PracHub, which made me feel more confident. The interview wrapped up with a behavioral round, and I accepted an offer, but ultimately decided to decline it for another opportunity. Overall, it was a smooth experience.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Number of Islands — given a 2D grid of '1's (land) and '0's (water), count the number of connected islands. Walk through DFS vs BFS, and discuss how to avoid revisiting cells (in-place mutation vs visited set) and what changes if the grid is huge and must stream from disk.
It started with an OA, and then after a few weeks, I got invited to four rounds of interviews: technical and behavioral at 3 of the 4, and behavioral only at one.
I applied online. I interviewed at Amazon (Calgary, AB) in Jun 2026
Interview
Online Assessment is the first step in the process. I didn’t have an HR phone screening and went straight to the OA after applying. It was sent to me about a week after I submitted my application.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The first question is LeetCode style algorithms question, and the second question gives a full stack repo (choice of Java, NodeJS, or Django) and asks to solve a backend issue which is causing a bug in the frontend. Unit tests must pass to pass the second question. You can run both backend/frontend indivdually or together