Amazon interview questions

Showing 391–420 of 653 results

• Find the Lowest Common Ancestor in a Binary TreeEasy

  This problem tests tree traversal techniques and recursive logic to identify the deepest node that is an ancestor to two specified nodes within a binary tree.

  AmazonSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsTechnical Screen
• Find the Maximum Island AreaMedium

  Find the largest four-neighbor island area in a binary matrix, including the component-size challenges of row-by-row streaming.

  AmazonSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsOnline Assessment
• Find the Minimum Processing Rate to Meet a DeadlineMedium

  This problem tests the ability to determine a minimum threshold using binary search on the answer space, combined with modular arithmetic and ceiling division.

  AmazonSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsOnsite
• Find the Most Common Visit PatternHard

  This problem tests your ability to process chronological event data to identify the most frequent 3-step sequence, requiring efficient data structures to handle large volumes of user logs.

  AmazonSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsOnsite
• Find the Most Frequent Request IDsMedium

  Implement an algorithm to identify the top k most frequent request IDs from a stream of log events, breaking frequency ties by smaller ID values and handling cases where k exceeds the number of unique IDs.

  AmazonSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsOnsite
• Find the Most Frequently Used Meeting RoomEasy

  Simulate meeting room assignments with delayed starts and duration preservation using priority queues to find the most utilized room.

  AmazonSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsTechnical Screen
• Find the Single Value in a Sorted Array of PairsEasy

  This problem tests the ability to optimize a linear search into a logarithmic one by leveraging the properties of sorted pairs using binary search.

  AmazonSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsTechnical Screen
• Find top-k lottery winners by spendingMedium

  This problem tests the ability to manage top-k selection from a stream or static collection using heap data structures while enforcing deterministic tie-breaking rules.

  AmazonSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsTechnical Screen
• Find top-spend categories per customer with rankingMedium

  This question evaluates proficiency with SQL aggregation and JOINs, analytic/window functions (RANK()), tie and NULL/edge-case handling, and percent-of-total calculations for per-customer spend analysis.

  AmazonData ScientistData Manipulation (SQL/Python)Onsite
• Find two numbers that sum to targetMedium

  This question evaluates a candidate's competency in basic algorithmic problem-solving within the Coding & Algorithms domain, focusing on array manipulation, pair-sum reasoning, and analysis of time-space trade-offs.

  AmazonApplied ScientistCoding & AlgorithmsTechnical Screen
• Find when failures started in log streamMedium

  This problem tests the ability to identify the first occurrence of a specific condition in a sorted boolean stream using a modified binary search approach.

  AmazonSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsTechnical Screen
• Finding the Root Cause of an Intermittent Failure When the Obvious Metrics Look HealthyMedium

  A behavioral debugging question: describe a system that failed intermittently while its obvious metrics looked healthy, how you found the root cause, and how long it took. It tests whether you can explain why the dashboards stayed green and show a systematic, evidence-driven narrowing process.

  AmazonSoftware EngineerBehavioral & LeadershipOnsite
• Fix a Broken Podcast Episode Search Against Five Behavior RulesHard

  Fix a broken podcast episode search function so it matches substrings case-insensitively, supports searching by title, host, or both, sorts results correctly, and excludes unpublished episodes.

  AmazonSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnline Assessment
• Fix a Buggy Spring Boot Movie Search Against Five Search RulesHard

  From an Amazon online assessment: fix a buggy Spring Boot movie search backend so that search is partial-match and case-insensitive, can target titles, stars or all fields, sorts by popularity with further keys, and returns only published movies. It tests debugging layered code, query logic and test-first verification.

  AmazonSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnline Assessment
• Fix the Password Reset WorkflowMedium

  Implement and debug a stateful password reset manager that handles token generation, time-to-live (TTL) expiry, brute-force attempt limits, and single-use token invalidation.

  AmazonSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnline Assessment
• Format a Forest of Nested CommentsMedium

  This problem tests your ability to reconstruct hierarchical relationships from flat input data and format them into a visual tree representation with specific character-based connectors.

  AmazonFrontend EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsOnsite
• Frequency Stack with Recency Tie-BreakingMedium

  Design a frequency stack data structure that supports pushing elements and popping the most frequent element, breaking ties by choosing the most recently pushed element, with both operations running in O(1) time.

  AmazonSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsTechnical Screen
• From Early NLP Embeddings to Modern LLM EmbeddingsMedium

  Evaluate the architectural and practical evolution of NLP text embeddings, and formulate a decision framework comparing small bi-encoders versus large LLM-based embedding models based on retrieval quality, latency, and operational cost.

  AmazonApplied ScientistMachine LearningOnsite
• GRPO Deep Dive: Critic-Free RL, Parallelism, MLA, and Reward Design for a Reasoning LLMHard

  This question tests your deep understanding of Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) for post-training reasoning models, including how critic-free optimization alters training dynamics, distributed memory scaling, KV-cache efficiency via Multi-Head Latent Attention (MLA), and reward hacking mitigations.

  AmazonApplied ScientistMachine LearningTechnical Screen
• GRPO in NumPy: Group-Relative Advantages, Process Rewards and Shaped RewardsMedium

  Implement the core of Group Relative Policy Optimization in a NumPy notebook: group-normalized advantages, the clipped objective with a KL penalty, per-token credit from process rewards, and shaped rewards. Tests fluency with array axes and broadcasting and an understanding of how reward normalization interacts with shaping terms.

  AmazonMachine Learning EngineerMachine LearningOnsite
• GenAI Literacy Questions: Daily AI Use, Handling Bad AI Output, and RAG ProjectsMedium

  Behavioral questions on generative AI literacy reported from hiring manager and Bar Raiser rounds: how you use AI tools day to day, a time you caught bad AI output, and a walkthrough of a retrieval-augmented generation project. It tests verification habits, judgment about data boundaries and RAG fundamentals.

  AmazonSoftware EngineerBehavioral & LeadershipOnsite
• Generalize Dictionary MergingMedium

  Explain an approach to merging two dictionaries and generalizing it efficiently to k dictionaries, explicitly identifying the collision semantics that must be clarified.

  AmazonSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnsite
• Generate Synthetic Clickstream Data with Python FunctionMedium

  This question evaluates a candidate's ability to implement synthetic data generation and probabilistic event simulation in Python using libraries like pandas and numpy, emphasizing timestamp handling, random sampling, and feature engineering for clickstream records.

  AmazonData ScientistCoding & AlgorithmsTechnical Screen
• Generate primes up to n efficientlyMedium

  This question evaluates algorithm design and complexity analysis for prime generation, focusing on sieving techniques and time-space trade-offs when producing primes up to large n.

  AmazonData ScientistCoding & AlgorithmsTechnical Screen
• Going Above and Beyond for a Customer and Refusing to Lower the Quality BarMedium

  Two customer-focused behavioral prompts: describe going well beyond what was required to solve a customer's problem, and refusing to compromise on quality or service under pressure to cut corners. It assesses customer focus, judgment about trade-offs and raising standards for the whole team.

  AmazonSoftware EngineerBehavioral & LeadershipOther
• Group Anagrams Without Sorted Character SignaturesMedium

  Group anagrams without sorting each word's characters, preserving repeated words and reasoning about frequency signatures and overflow-prone encodings.

  AmazonSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsOnline Assessment
• Handle Workplace Conflict and CriticismMedium

  This question tests your ability to navigate professional disagreements and integrate constructive feedback while maintaining focus on project outcomes.

  AmazonSoftware EngineerBehavioral & LeadershipTechnical Screen
• Handle deadlines and missesMedium

  Handle deadlines and misses evaluates behavioral evidence, ownership, communication, trade-offs, and measurable outcomes in a realistic interview setting. A strong answer states assumptions, handles edge cases, explains trade-offs, and shows how to validate the result clearly.

  AmazonSoftware EngineerBehavioral & LeadershipTechnical Screen
• High Availability and Failover for a Primary-Replica DatabaseMedium

  This problem tests your ability to design a resilient database architecture that minimizes downtime and data loss during node failures.

  AmazonSoftware EngineerSystem DesignOnsite
• Highest Average-Salary Team in an Org ChartMedium

  Tests bottom-up tree traversal to compute subtree aggregates (sum and count) and identify an optimal node using multi-level tie-breaking rules.

  AmazonApplied ScientistCoding & AlgorithmsTechnical Screen