Amazon SDE-1 Interview Experience | Offer Received

Company: Amazon
Role: SDE-1
Experience: 1 year in DS Intern
Education: B.Tech, IIT
Application: Referral
Final Result: Offer Received

Round-by-Round Experience

Online Assessment

The OA had two coding problems, one medium binary-search problem and another medium-hard DP problem.

After coding, usual work-style and work-simulation assessments.

Round 1 - DSA + Leadership Principles

I first got a variation of Rotten Oranges, which I approached using multi-source BFS. The second problem was Search in Rotated Sorted Array.

The behavioral discussion revolved around handling a tight deadline and an interesting problem I had solved in the past.

Round 2 - DSA + Leadership Principles

The first problem modeled currency conversion as a graph. I initially discussed BFS/DFS, and the conversation later moved towards weighted DSU when multiple queries were involved.

The second problem was Decode String. I needed a few hints before reaching an iterative stack-based solution.

The LP questions focused on ownership and a situation where I had disagreed with my manager.

Round 3 - SDM + AI Fluency

This round was quite interesting because the SDM asked how I use LLMs in my work, how I verify their responses and when I decide whether an AI-generated answer can actually be trusted.

For DSA, I was asked about two knights trying to converge on an infinite chessboard. I used a BFS-based approach, followed by optimization questions.

We also spoke about disagreement and a situation where I had to learn something new.

Round 4 - Bar Raiser

The Bar Raiser was heavily focused on Leadership Principles, with behavioral discussion taking around 40–45 minutes.

The coding problem involved repeatedly transforming a binary string:

0 => 00 and 1 => 10

I had to determine the value at index i after k transformations.

I couldn't reach the optimal solution during the interview, but instead of getting stuck silently, I kept explaining my observations and thought process to the interviewer.

How I Would Prepare

For DSA, I would focus on graphs, BFS/DFS, binary search, DP and stack-based problems, while practicing how to explain and dry-run solutions without IDE support.

I would also take Leadership Principles seriously. Having genuine examples ready around ownership, disagreement, deadlines, learning and impact made those conversations much easier.

For AI-related discussions, knowing buzzwords isn't enough. Be prepared to explain how you use LLMs, validate their output and handle situations where the model can be wrong.

Final Result

Despite not finding the optimal solution in my Bar Raiser coding problem, I eventually received the update that I had cleared the process and received the Amazon SDE-1 offer.

That was probably my biggest takeaway from the experience, you don't necessarily need every round to be perfect. I made mistakes and needed hints at different points, but I kept communicating my approach and stayed consistent across the complete loop, the entire process worth it for me.