Interview preparation for data roles

As a new university graduate or intern, you have multiple opportunities to innovate and solve complex real-world technical and business problems at Amazon.

Our interviews for student and graduate data roles are designed to identify candidates who have the technical proficiency and behavioral skills required to help us achieve our mission to be Earth’s most customer-centric company.

To learn about interviewing for jobs outside of our university roles, please visit Interviewing at Amazon.

Interviewing at Amazon

What to expect as a Business Intelligence Engineer (BIE)

Our Business Intelligence Engineers (BIEs) build a variety of analytics. You’ll define key performance indicators (KPIs), automate data pipelines, and create reports, dashboards, and visualizations.

You’ll need to have an understanding of statistics and be proficient in SQL. While the role of BIE might vary slightly from team to team, you should be able to work with ambiguous data, using SQL to come up with answers that may not be immediately obvious. You should be able to translate between business needs and data, and be able to create actionable insights for your stakeholders.

What to expect as a Data Engineer

Our Data Engineers are knowledgeable in a variety of strategies for ingesting, modeling, processing, and persisting data. They have expertise in building scalable data infrastructure, and they understand distributed systems concepts from a data storage and compute perspective.

Data Engineers are knowledgeable in SQL. They have an understanding of ETL and data modeling. They are also proficient in one or more scripting or programming language. They ensure the accuracy and availability of data to their customers, and they understand how technical decisions can impact their business’ analytics and reporting. Data Engineers work with data in large volume and velocity, often using the latest AWS and open-source technologies.

The interview process

Amazon’s interview process is designed to be as thorough as possible, so it may take longer than you’re used to. However, you should hear back within two to five business days after your interview concludes. Our team will be your partner and advocate in the process, making sure you’re always up to date with your candidacy.

  • Interview: Internship Roles

    You’ll have one round of two interviews that will be a combination of technical and behavioral interview questions. Each interview lasts about 45 to 60 minutes and will be be one-on-one with an Amazonian.

  • Interview: Full-Time Roles

    There are two rounds of interviews for full-time roles. The first round consists of one interview with an Amazonian and is about 45 to 60 minutes long. If successful, you’ll proceed to the second and final round. This stage has three to four interviews that are 45 to 60 minutes each.

  • Debrief Review

    Your interviewers will meet with each other to review their feedback. They ensure our hiring process is fair and that we’re holding true to Amazonian standards as we grow.

  • Offer

    If we make you an offer, we’ll confirm it in writing and talk to you about possible start dates, office locations, visas, and how to prepare yourself for working at Amazon.

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.

Interview tip: Use the STAR method to answer behavioral-based questions. This is a structured method of responding to a question by discussing the specific situation, task, action, and result of the situation you’re describing.

Download video transcript

Technical interview

Interviews for Data Engineer and Business Intelligence Engineer roles assess your technical acumen through a combination of verbal and coding exercises. Your recruiting contact will share more details, but a best practice to get started is to review the job description, which includes the basic and preferred qualifications. This will give you an idea of what to study.

Resources

Questions? Reach out to your recruiting contact.

FAQs

Review frequently asked questions about the interview process.