Amazon

Amazon visited our campus for its 2-month Software Development Engineer internship hiring. I had been preparing mainly for DSA and core CS subjects, so I was reasonably comfortable with the process. The selection process was short compared with some other companies, but the coding questions were definitely the most important part. Online Assessment The first round was an online assessment with multiple sections. The first section was debugging. There were several short code snippets where we had to identify and fix the issue so that the code produced the expected output. The questions were mostly straightforward, but the time limit was tight. The main coding section had two coding problems with around 70 minutes. One problem was based on dynamic programming, while the other involved finding the maximum possible score along a path in a matrix. The matrix problem required thinking carefully about the definition of the path score rather than simply finding the usual maximum-sum path. There were also behavioral and reasoning sections. The behavioral part contained work-style questions, while the reasoning section had aptitude and logical reasoning questions. The biggest challenge was managing time between debugging and coding. I made sure not to spend too much time trying to perfect one question while leaving the other untouched. After the assessment, the shortlist was announced. Around 150 students had appeared for the process and approximately 30 were shortlisted for the interview. I was happy to see my name on the list. A similar public Amazon 2-month campus report describes the same broad structure of debugging, two coding questions, work-style assessment and reasoning. Technical Interview The technical interview was around an hour. The interviewer started with a quick introduction and then moved directly to coding. There wasn't much time spent on general conversation, so I knew that the main focus would be problem solving. The first question was a graph problem. I was given a set of interactions between members of a group and had to determine whether the group was a “good” group based on the condition that every interaction should happen between opposite categories. I recognized that this was essentially a bipartite graph problem. I explained the idea first and then discussed how I would divide the vertices into two groups using BFS/DFS. If two connected vertices ever required the same color, the graph would not be bipartite. The interviewer asked me to proceed with the implementation. I coded the solution and explained the time complexity as O(V + E). The second question was about finding the distance between the two farthest nodes in a graph/tree. I initially explained a brute-force approach. The interviewer then asked me to optimize it. I started thinking about how to avoid calculating distances from every possible node. I discussed the relationship between the diameter of a tree and the farthest-node technique. Because we were already running short on time, the interviewer moved the discussion forward after I explained the optimization idea. The interview then moved briefly to my resume and projects. I was asked about one of my projects, the technologies I used and some of the implementation decisions. The interviewer wanted to understand whether I had actually worked on the project rather than simply copied it. There were also a few behavioral questions. Amazon places considerable importance on its Leadership Principles, so I had prepared examples from college projects and team experiences. I tried to answer using a clear situation, the action I personally took and the result. One question was about a difficult technical problem I had faced. I explained the problem, what I initially tried, why it didn't work and how I eventually solved it. The interviewer also asked if I had any questions. I asked about the kind of work interns generally get during the internship and how interns are evaluated. Result The result was announced shortly after the interviews, and I was selected for the 2-month SDE internship at Amazon. The process was shorter than I expected, but it was very DSA-focused. The OA tested debugging, coding, reasoning and behavioral judgment, while the interview concentrated heavily on graph-based problem solving and optimization. One thing I learned from the process was that simply knowing a solution isn't enough. During the interview, I had to explain the brute-force approach first, identify its limitations and then move toward an optimized solution. The interviewer also paid attention to complexity and how clearly I communicated my reasoning. For anyone preparing for a similar Amazon 2-month SDE internship, I would focus heavily on arrays, strings, trees, graphs, BFS/DFS, binary search, hashing and dynamic programming. It is also worth practicing Amazon-style behavioral questions around the Leadership Principles because the behavioral section can be part of the assessment even when the technical interview is primarily DSA-focused. Public 2-month Amazon internship reports show this same combination of coding, behavioral assessment and technical problem solving. Overall, getting selected felt especially good because the process rewarded both coding ability and the ability to explain the solution clearly under time pressure.