My Amazon SDE-1 Interview Experience (2026)

A few months back, I came across an opening for the SDE-1 role at Amazon careers page. I asked a friend for a referral and applied through it.

A few days later, I received an email from the Amazon APAC India team asking me to fill out an interest form for the role. Around a week after that, I got the Online Assessment link.

Online Assessment

The coding round had:

• 2 LeetCode medium-level questions
• Behavioral/work-style questions

The coding questions went pretty well for me, and I was able to solve both of them. For the behavioral section, I kept Amazon’s Leadership Principles in mind and answered according to how I actually approach work and teamwork.

Around 3 weeks later, I received another email from the recruitment team saying they wanted to move forward with my application and asked for my availability for in-person interviews at the Bengaluru office.

Shortly after that, I got a call from a US Amazon recruiting number confirming my availability for the interviews scheduled the following week.

Interview Day at Amazon Bengaluru

I traveled to Bengaluru for the interviews at my own expense.

There were around 20 other candidates interviewing for the same SDE-1 role. Before the process started, the recruiters gave us a briefing about how the interviews would be conducted and issued temporary guest ID cards that had to be returned by the end of the day.

I had a total of 3 rounds that day.

One thing that surprised me was that all coding rounds were done on pen and paper. Before writing code, I had to explain my thought process, discuss the approach, and then write the solution in my preferred language. I chose C++ for all rounds.

Round 1

Interviewer: Senior SDE

The round started with introductions followed by Leadership Principle questions around:

• Transparency
• Customer Obsession

Question 1

The first problem was a graph problem involving cycle detection in directed graphs.

I explained my approach using Topological Sort and solved it successfully. After that, we discussed time and space complexity.

The interviewer then shifted into concept discussions around DFS traversals:

• Inorder
• Preorder
• Postorder

We discussed how each traversal works and scenarios where postorder traversal may not be useful.

Question 2

The second problem involved finding the path from the root node to a given node in a binary tree.

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/dsa/print-path-root-given-node-binary-tree/

After solving it, we discussed complexity analysis and then moved into a discussion comparing BFS vs DFS and when each approach is preferred.

Overall, the first round felt more like a technical discussion than just solving questions.

Round 2

Panel: SDE-2 + Shadowing SDE-1

After introductions, I was asked Leadership Principle questions related to Ownership.

Question 1

The first problem was very similar to the classic “Aggressive Cows” problem.

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/problems/aggressive-cows/1

Instead of cows, the scenario involved robots on a factory line.

I first explained the brute-force solution and then moved to the optimized binary search approach along with the time and space complexity analysis.

Question 2

The second question was the classic “Number of Islands” problem involving a grid of 0s and 1s.

https://leetcode.com/problems/number-of-islands/description/

I solved it using graph traversal and also suggested a space-optimized approach where the same input grid could be reused instead of maintaining a separate visited array.

Again, we discussed complexity in detail.

After this round, lunch boxes were provided by Amazon before the next interview started.

Round 3 — AI Awareness Round

Panel: 2 Senior SDEs (1 virtual + 1 in-person)

This round was honestly one of the most interesting rounds I’ve had in any interview process.

The in-person interviewer went deeply through my resume. Since I had mentioned a Multi-Agent AI System project, they asked me to explain it in detail.

The discussion went into:

• My exact contributions
• Tradeoffs and design decisions
• Challenges faced
• How I solved those challenges
• How I evaluated efficiency and accuracy
• Real-world impact of the project

Fortunately, I had worked deeply on the project myself, so I was able to answer everything confidently, and both interviewers seemed genuinely interested in the discussion.

After that, they asked how I use AI tools in my day-to-day workflow.

I explained how I use tools like Claude, v0, and Codex to:

• Speed up development
• Improve understanding
• Explore ideas faster
• Build side projects

I also made it clear that I don’t blindly copy generated code and always ensure I fully understand what’s happening before using it.

Then came the coding question.

The problem was based on linked lists:

Copy List with Random Pointer

https://leetcode.com/problems/copy-list-with-random-pointer/description/

I explained the brute-force solution first and then moved to the optimized time and space-efficient approach.

The interviewers seemed pretty satisfied with the discussion and even kept a copy of my resume with them afterward.

The entire on-site process lasted around 6–7 hours.

At the end, HR informed me that my Bar Raiser round would be scheduled separately in a few days.

Bar Raiser Round

About 10 days later, my Bar Raiser round was scheduled virtually with a Principal Engineer at Amazon.

This round was heavily focused on Leadership Principles.

The interviewer asked detailed questions around:

• Learn and Be Curious
• Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit
• Deliver Results
• Highest Standards
• Bias for Action
• Think Big
• Invent and Simplify

Most questions were experience-based:

• Times I had to learn something quickly
• Conflicts within teams
• Missing deadlines
• Solving difficult problems under pressure
• Improving processes for others

I answered using examples from my internships, projects, and previous experiences using the STAR format (Situation, Task, Action, Result) .

After the behavioral discussion, I was given a coding question on a collaborative coding platform.

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/problems/alien-dictionary/1

The question was based on graphs and Topological Sort using Kahn’s Algorithm, very similar to the Alien Dictionary problem.

Instead of writing fully compilable code, the interviewer mainly wanted:

• Clear approach
• Correct pseudocode
• Dry run on an example
• Time and space complexity analysis

Toward the end, I asked for feedback.

The interviewer mentioned that the discussion had gone very well and that my fundamentals and concepts were very strong.

That honestly gave me a pretty good feeling about the outcome.

The Result

Three days after the Bar Raiser round, I received a call from the recruiter saying that I had been selected for the role.

The next day, I received the official offer letter for the SDE-1 position at Amazon.

Definitely one of the happiest moments for me.

My Preparation Strategy

Before the interviews, I had already completed:

• Striver’s A2Z DSA Sheet
• Striver’s SDE Sheet

A few days before the interviews, I revised using:

• NeetCode 150

For Leadership Principles preparation, I created around 16 different STAR-format stories covering different situations and experiences.

One thing that helped me a lot throughout the process was staying calm during interviews and treating the discussions naturally instead of trying to sound “perfect.”

Final Thoughts

One thing I really liked about the entire process was that the interviewers focused heavily on fundamentals and thought process rather than just memorized solutions.

In almost every round, communication mattered as much as coding.

Being able to explain:

• Why you chose an approach
• Tradeoffs
• Complexity
• Edge cases
• Alternative solutions

was extremely important.

The AI Awareness round was also something new and interesting compared to traditional interview loops.

Overall, the process was challenging but genuinely enjoyable, and I learned a lot from it regardless of the outcome.

Hopefully, this helps someone preparing for Amazon interviews.