Top 40 Amazon Interview Questions and Answers [2024]
Amazon is one of the Big 5 American technological companies that offers a platform for abundant growth opportunities and lucrative job roles. If you aspire to work with Amazon, you have landed at the right place! In this blog, find Amazon interview questions with the finest answers and all the information you need to prepare for the interview.
Amazon Hiring Process
A strong understanding of the company’s hiring allows you to answer questions confidently, boosting your chances of getting hired. Amazon’s hiring process includes four steps:
1. Application
The first step is to submit an online application through the jobs portal sites. To increase your chances of getting noticed, make sure your resume is tailored to highlight relevant skills, experiences, and achievements. Pay close attention to keywords and job-specific requirements to ensure your application stands out from the rest.
2. Online Test
The online test is categorized into two parts.
- First is the workstyle assessment, where your professional work style and how it fits into that of the company is assessed. This section usually takes 10-20 minutes.
- Second is the work stimulation section, which tests your technical ability by asking questions related to your job role. This section typically takes 20 minutes or even longer depending on difficulty level.
3. Telephonic Interview
Once you have successfully cleared the written test, you will be invited for a telephone interview that typically lasts between 45 minutes to an hour. During this interview, the HR manager will evaluate your personality, work ethic, motivation, and business communication skills, which are essential qualities for any professional to possess
4. In-Person Interview
The final interview consists of two parts –
- Behavioural Interview: This interview focuses on your previous experiences and how they relate to the role you’re applying for. This interview is based on the premise that your past performance is a good indicator of your future performance.
- Technical Interview: This is designed to assess your technical skills and knowledge. You may be asked to write code on a whiteboard or laptop to demonstrate your proficiency, so be sure to come prepared.
Amazon Behavioral Interview Questions with Answers
The behavioural interview questions are designed to assess your alignment with the company’s leadership principles. To answer these questions, you should use the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) method. Here are some Amazon questions to help you confidently answer the behavioural interview questions.
Q1. What is the coolest thing you’ve learned on your own that you’ve then been able to apply in your job?
Sample Answer: My self-taught coding abilities have allowed me to streamline and automate my tasks, greatly increasing my productivity. This demonstrates my eagerness to learn new skills, my resourcefulness in finding low-cost ways to optimize efficiency, my adaptability in implementing impactful improvements, and my commitment to continuous growth.
Q2. How do you deal with a challenging customer?
Sample Answer: When dealing with a challenging customer, I prioritize active listening and empathy to understand their concerns fully. I remain calm and maintain a positive attitude, aiming to de-escalate the situation by offering solutions and alternatives. I focus on finding common ground and working collaboratively to address their issues effectively while ensuring excellent customer service.
Q3. Tell me about your most significant career failure and what you learned from it.
Sample Answer: My most significant career failure was when a product launch got delayed by two hours due to an unexpected bug. This failure taught me to be more meticulous during the coding and testing phase. Additionally, it promoted me to implement more robust planning and communication methodologies.
Q4. Tell me about a time you helped someone grow in their career and how it benefited them.
Sample Answer: My guidance and mentorship in project management assisted my teammates in honing their skills. I made this happen by providing constructive feedback and increasing their efficiency by prioritizing and automating certain tasks. This enabled them to exceed expectations and resulted in a well-deserved motivation, highlighting the importance of mentorship in career development.
Q5. Tell me a situation where you went out of your comfort zone to learn and deliver something.
Sample Answer: As a non-technical professional taking on a leadership role for a technical project, I was initially faced with a challenge. However, I actively tried to expand my technical knowledge by collaborating closely with my team and leaning on the expertise of my peers. Through dedication and resourcefulness, I rapidly gained proficiency in the technical concepts required to guide the project to success.
Q6. Share the time when you exceeded expectations.
Sample Answer: Leading a cross-functional team was a challenging situation for me. However, the leadership resulted in an impressive outcome when we were able to deliver the project on time and exceed the client’s expectations. Of course, none of this would have been possible without the dedication, support, and effort of every team member.
Q7. Tell me about a moment when you provided a straightforward answer to a tricky issue.
Sample Answer: In a crisis, I offered a practical solution by promoting open communication among stakeholders. This helped build trust and led to an effective solution. This taught me that transparency and calmness are key to finding effective solutions.
Q8. What’s your biggest achievement?
Sample Answer: I led a project to create a Java-based application within a month. My leadership, planning, and delegation skills enabled my team to deliver the project on time. Effective communication and collaboration, identifying team strengths and weaknesses, clear goal setting, and regular progress check-ins were key to our success.
Q9. What are some approaches you would apply to maximize our profits?
Sample Answer: To maximize profits, I would implement cost-effective strategies such as automating certain tasks, and hiring interns to assist the team in the smooth functioning of the team. Additionally, I would explore new revenue streams through innovative solutions and data-driven strategies.
Q10. What improvements have you made at your current company?
Sample Answer: At my current company, pairing experts of distinct domains for projects has resulted in innovative and effective solutions. Additionally, this strategy has assisted team members to learn new skills from their peers and broaden their horizons. It has resulted in increased employee engagement, team bonding, and productivity.
Also Read: Amazon SQL Interview Questions and Answers
Amazon Technical Interview Questions and Answers
Let’s explore some Amazon interview questions and answers for the technical interview round.
Q11. Can you differentiate between class and object in C++?
Answer: A class in C++ acts as a blueprint for the object. It defines members that describe the functionality and properties of that class. Whereas an object in C++ is an instance of a class. It has a copy of the class members and can access and alter them according to the class description.
Q12. How can you allocate and deallocate memory in C++?
Answer: Memory in C++ can be allocated and deallocated by:
- Using “new” with the appropriate type specifier to allocate memory and “delete” to release it.
- malloc and free, are allocation functions that directly manage memory blocks
- Using the RAII (Resource Acquisition Is Initialization) principle to automatically manage memory allocation and deallocation.
Q13. What is operator overloading?
Answer: Operator overloading is the ability to redefine the meaning of existing operators (e.g., +, -, *, =) for custom data types in C++. This allows for more intuitive and natural usage of the operators with your custom types
Q14. Given an array of integers, write a function that returns true if there is a triplet (a, b, c) that satisfies a2 + b2 = c2.
Answer: The function is as follows:
bool has_pythagorean_triplet(const std::vector<int>& nums) {
for (int i = 0; i < nums.size(); ++i) {
for (int j = i + 1; j < nums.size(); ++j) {
int c_square = nums[i] * nums[i] + nums[j] * nums[j];
if (std::binary_search(nums.begin(), nums.end(), c_square)) {
return true;
}
}
}
return false;
}
Q15. Define PaaS.
Answer: Perform as a Service or PaaS offers a platform to develop, deploy, and manage applications without managing the underlying infrastructure. It usually includes a runtime environment, database, and development tools.
Q16. What Are some of the Security Best Practices for Amazon EC2?
Answer: The benefits of the security best practices for Amazon EC2 are as follows:
- Use of IAM to control access and least privilege principle.
- Implementing security groups to restrict network traffic.
- Regularly updating software and patch vulnerabilities.
- Monitoring logs and activity for suspicious behavior.
- Encrypting sensitive data at rest and in transit.
Q17. What are Key-Pairs in AWS?
Answer: Key-pairs in AWS are a cryptographic pair of public and private keys used for secure SSH access to EC2 instances. The private key is kept secret and used to authenticate your connection, whereas the public key is uploaded to the instance for verification.
Q18. What Are the Benefits of AWS’s Disaster Recovery?
Answer: AWS’s disaster recovery offers various benefits such as
- High availability as redundant infrastructure and failover mechanisms ensure service continuity during outages.
- Reduced downtime due to rapid recovery from disasters, minimizing business disruption.
- Cost-effectiveness with a Pay-as-you-go model for disaster recovery resources.
- Improved scalability as disaster recovery plans can be easily scaled based on needs.
Q19. What are the elements of an AWS CloudFormation template?
Answer: The nine elements of an AWS CloudFormation template include:
- Format version
- Metadata
- Resources
- Parameters
- Mappings
- Conditions
- Outputs
- Description
- Transform
Q20. You have millions of users uploading photos. How do you store them efficiently?
Answer: Here are some ways to effectively store photos uploaded by millions of users:
- Use services like Amazon S3 for scalable and cost-effective storage of large quantities of unstructured data like photos.
- Employ Amazon CloudFront to distribute photos efficiently to users with low latency and global reach.
- Implement image compression techniques to reduce storage requirements and bandwidth consumption.
- Develop smaller versions of photos for faster previews and browsing.
- Utilize different storage classes based on access frequency and cost considerations
Also Read: Amazon Software Developer Interview Questions
Amazon Coding Interview Questions with Answers
Let’s explore some coding questions for the Amazon interview round.
Q21. Find the missing number in the array –
| 3 | 7 | 1 | 2 | 8 | 4 | 5 |
def find_missing_number(arr):
n = len(arr) + 1 # Expected length of the sequence
expected_sum = n * (n + 1) // 2 # Formula for sum of 1 to n
actual_sum = sum(arr)
return expected_sum - actual_sum # Missing number
Q22. Write the code to merge two sorted linked lists.
Answer:
def merge_sorted_lists(list1, list2):
merged_list = ListNode(None) # Create a new list
current = merged_list
while list1 and list2:
if list1.val <= list2.val:
current.next = list1
list1 = list1.next
else:
current.next = list2
list2 = list2.next
current = current.next
current.next = list1 or list2 # Append any remaining elements
return merged_list.next # Skip the initial dummy node
Q23. Write a code to implement string segmentation.
Answer:
import re
def word_segmentation(text):
"""
Segments a string into words based on whitespace and punctuation.
Args:
text: The string to be segmented.
Returns:
A list of words extracted from the text.
"""
words = re.split(r"\s+|\W+", text) # Split by whitespace or non-alphanumeric characters
return [word for word in words if word] # Remove empty strings
# Example usage
text = "This is a sample text with punctuation!"
words = word_segmentation(text)
print(f"Words: {words}")
Q24. Write a code to check if two arrays are equal or not.
Answer:
def are_arrays_equal(arr1, arr2):
return arr1 == arr2 # Python's built-in comparison
Q25. Given the root of a binary tree, display the node values at each level. Node values for all levels should be displayed on separate lines
Answer:
def level_order_traversal(root):
if not root:
return
queue = [root]
while queue:
level_nodes = len(queue)
for _ in range(level_nodes):
node = queue.pop(0)
print(node.val, end=' ')
if node.left:
queue.append(node.left)
if node.right:
queue.append(node.right)
print()
Q26. Given a string, find the length of the longest substring which has no repeating characters.
Answer:
def length_of_longest_substring(s):
start = maxLength = 0
seen = set()
for i in range(len(s)):
while s[i] in seen:
seen.remove(s[start])
start += 1
seen.add(s[i])
maxLength = max(maxLength, i - start + 1)
return maxLength
Q27. Given a list of intervals, merge all the overlapping intervals to produce a list that has only mutually exclusive intervals.
Answer:
def merge_overlapping_intervals(intervals):
"""
Merges overlapping intervals into a list of mutually exclusive intervals.
Args:
intervals: A list of tuples representing intervals (start, end).
Returns:
A list of merged intervals.
"""
intervals.sort(key=lambda x: x[0]) # Sort by start time
merged = []
current_start, current_end = intervals[0]
for start, end in intervals[1:]:
if start <= current_end: # Overlap
current_end = max(current_end, end) # Merge
else:
merged.append((current_start, current_end))
current_start, current_end = start, end # Start a new interval
merged.append((current_start, current_end)) # Add the last interval
return merged
# Example usage
intervals = [(1, 3), (2, 6), (8, 10), (15, 18)]
merged_intervals = merge_overlapping_intervals(intervals)
print(f"Merged intervals: {merged_intervals}")
Q28. Given a string s, return true if it is a palindrome, and false otherwise.
Answer:
def is_palindrome(s):
return s == s[::-1] # Reverse and compare
Q29. Given the root of a binary tree, return its maximum depth.
Answer:
def max_depth(root):
if not root:
return 0
return 1 + max(max_depth(root.left), max_depth(root.right))
Q30. You are climbing a staircase. It takes n steps to reach the top. Each time you can climb 1 or 2 steps. In how many distinct ways can you climb to the top?
Answer:
def climb_stairs(n):
dp = [0] * (n + 1)
dp[0] = dp[1] = 1
for i in range(2, n + 1):
dp[i] = dp[i - 1] + dp[i - 2]
return dp[n]
Explore our coding interview preparation course to impress the recruiters with your coding and interview skills!
Amazon HR Interview Questions and Answers
Here’s a list of Amazon job interview questions for the HR round. Also, check out the complete list of all the Amazon HR interview questions and impress your recruiters with ease.
Q31. Why do you wish to work with Amazon?
Sample Answer: I believe that innovation and technology can solve a lot of problems and create a positive impact on people’s lives. Amazon’s commitment to innovation and the opportunity to work in a dynamic and fast-paced environment aligns with my beliefs. That’s the reason I want to work with Amazon.
Q32. Describe yourself in three words.
Sample Answer: I would describe myself as adaptable, analytical, and collaborative.
- Adaptable: I am highly flexible and able to adjust my approach based on new information and changing circumstances. I can swiftly tailor my communication style and recommendations to fit each unique situation.
- Analytical: I take a measured, data-driven approach to analyzing problems and delivering insights. I systematically break down complex issues, identify key patterns and relationships, and derive logical conclusions.
- Collaborative: I work best as part of a team, actively listening and considering different viewpoints.
Q33. What are your career goals and how do they align with this role?
Sample Answer: As an aspiring project manager, my ultimate career goal is to continuously grow and develop my skills to become an effective leader in my field. That’s why I believe that this job role at Amazon is a perfect fit for me and my long-term career objectives. With Amazon’s reputation for offering challenging opportunities and a platform for employees to upskill themselves, I know that I will be able to hone my project management skills and develop my leadership capabilities.
Q34. What metrics do you consider important for personal growth?
Sample Answer: I believe that to grow both personally and professionally, it’s important to focus on key metrics such as improving skills, achieving goals, and implementing feedback from mentors and colleagues. By regularly assessing progress and identifying areas of improvement, I can continuously develop and adapt to new challenges.
Q35. Share your three weaknesses and how will you overcome them.
Sample Answer: I tend to be overly self-critical, I will address this by focusing more on small achievements. Secondly, I delegate less. I will overcome this by trusting my team members and providing them with clear task guidelines. Lastly, I am overly meticulous for which I am learning to balance between perfectionism and efficiency.
Q36. Mention any four of Amazon’s leadership principles.
Answer: Amazon’s four leadership principles are
- Customer Obsession: Leaders start with the customer and work backward. They work to earn and keep customer trust by focusing on customer needs and delivering results.
- Ownership: Leaders act on behalf of the entire company. They think long-term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results.
- Invent and Simplify: Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify.
- Earn Trust: Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully.
Q37. How do you maintain work-life balance?
Sample Answer: I believe work-life balance is essential for a healthy life and being productive at work. I maintain work-life balance by prioritizing tasks, setting boundaries, regular breaks, and practicing time management. This allows me to complete my tasks on time, leaving me extra time to focus on my hobbies.
Q38. Tell me about a time you disagreed with your manager. How did you handle the situation?
Sample Answer: The time I had opposing views to my manager, I approached this situation by respectfully keeping my perspective while providing data to support my viewpoint. We engaged in a constructive discussion by analyzing all the aspects affecting the situation. In the end, we were able to find a middle ground addressing both concerns.
Q39. What is the most challenging thing about working with you?
Sample Answer: I take pride in being meticulous in my work, but I understand that perfectionism can sometimes hinder efficiency. I am continuously learning to strike the right balance between attention to detail and completing tasks promptly without compromising quality. With each project, I am improving my ability to work efficiently without sacrificing the quality of my output.
Q40. Have you ever missed a deadline? How did you handle it?
Sample Answer: Yes, I have missed a deadline due to unforeseen circumstances. I immediately communicated it with my team and proposed a revised timeline for the project. I ensured to meet the revised deadline and worked diligently towards it.
Conclusion
Joining Amazon is a significant career milestone, and understanding the hiring process is crucial for success. As you prepare for the hiring process, keep in mind that each stage of the interview is carefully crafted to assess your skills, values, and cultural fitness with Amazon’s customer-centric culture. It is best to prepare interview questions beforehand to frame answers in a better way and so you can be confident in front of the interviewers. Ensure to take guidance from the above-listed Amazon interview questions and answers to ace your interview!
