System Design Interview Prep
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Learn how to approach, analyze, and solve technical questions in your interview.
SDE III/Sr. SDE Interview Prep
At Amazon, our goal is to be the world’s most customer-centric company by delivering innovative products, services, and ideas. The Senior Software Engineer (SDE III) interview is designed to identify candidates who have the technical proficiency, behavioral skills, and cultural fit required to help us achieve this mission.
What does an SDE III do at Amazon?
- You’ll play a leadership role on your team. Your team will look to you for advice on the technical and business issues they face.
- You’ll build multiple high-performance, stable, scalable systems.
- You’ll have a system-wide, architectural view of the solutions you build.
- You’ll submit exemplary code submissions. Your solutions will be inventive, secure, easily maintainable, appropriately scalable, and extensible. You’ll write software that’s easy for others to contribute to.
The process
To be considered for an SDE III role, you must first submit a job application. If you meet the basic qualifications for the role, you’ll then complete a technical phone screening. If your technical phone screening is successful, a recruiter will contact you to arrange an interview loop.
Job Application
Technical Phone Screening
Technical Phone Screening Outcome
Interview Loop
Interview Outcome (within 5 business days)
Technical phone screening
Your technical phone screening will be with a senior leader on our team. It will last 60 minutes. Half of the time will be spent on questions that focus on our Leadership Principles and the other half will be spent on coding problems and system design.
Interview loop
Your loop will include five 55-minute interviews where you’ll meet with members of our software development community.
You’ll have the chance to discuss your experiences and expertise in several areas that help us determine success at Amazon.
These areas include both technical competencies and non-technical competencies that are based off of our Leadership Principles, which different interviewers will be assigned to evaluate.
System design
At Amazon, designing software systems is unique due to our size and speed of change. Expect at least one question on software systems design.
Your interviewer will ask questions related to your design, and you should ask questions to complete and validate your design.
Objectives
- Practicality
- Accuracy
- Efficiency
- Reliability
- Optimization
- Scalability
System design resources
System design videos
Low-Level Design Interview Tips
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High-Level Design Interview Tips
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Coding
Expect to be asked to write syntactically correct code—no pseudo code. If you feel a bit rusty coding without an IDE or coding in a specific language, it’s a good idea to dust off the cobwebs and get comfortable coding with Livecode.
The most important thing a SDE does at Amazon is write scalable, robust, and well-tested code. These are the main evaluation criteria. Also check for edge cases and validate that no bad input can slip through.
Objectives
- Efficiency
- Reliability
- Robustness
- Portability
- Maintainability
- Readability
Coding resources
Coding videos
Amazon Coding Sample
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Coding Interview Tips
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SDE Interview Coding Example
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Behavioral interview
A significant portion of the conversation will focus on how you’ve demonstrated our Leadership Principles in your past jobs. This is because past behavior is an indicator of future success. We won’t ask brain teasers. Instead, we’ll focus on the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of your experiences, as well as the ‘why’ of your decisions.
Each interviewer will typically ask two or three behavioral-based questions about successes or challenges and how you handled them using our Leadership Principles.
How to prepare
First, think about your most memorable experiences in your previous jobs and recall specific details. Amazon is a data-driven company, so your answers should include metrics or data where applicable. Then, consider how you applied the Leadership Principles in your experiences.
Have examples that showcase your expertise and demonstrate how you’ve taken risks, succeeded, failed and grown. Make sure your answers are well-structured. Use the STAR method to frame your responses.
Amazon culture
We’re a company that brings a wide range of perspectives to inventing on behalf of our customers. These include race, ethnicity, gender, age, physical and mental ability, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, culture, language, and education, as well as professional and life experience. We’re committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion.