Amazon Software Engineer Interview Experience
Amazon · Intern
Interview process
I interviewed for an Amazon Software Development Engineer internship in February 2025. The process was three rounds over about three weeks: a recruiter screen, a HackerRank assessment, and a final technical conversation that also included behavioral questions. The recruiter screen was straightforward and helpful for setting expectations. The HackerRank portion was the most time-sensitive part, so it rewarded being comfortable turning an approach into working code without spending too long on setup.
The final interviewer was genuinely nice and the conversation felt collaborative. The coding problem was to reverse a linked list. I started by explaining the iterative solution and the pointer changes before coding, then walked through edge cases such as an empty list and a single-node list. The behavioral questions were folded into the same conversation, so I tried to make my answers concise and connect them to how I approach problem-solving and teamwork. Overall, it felt like a fair intern process: not designed to be tricky, but it did require clear communication and clean implementation under time pressure.
Interview rounds · 3
- 1
Recruiter screen
- 2
Online assessment
- Q1. HackerRank coding assessment (I do not remember the exact prompt).
- 3
Technical round
Q1. Reverse a linked list.
How they answeredThe interviewer combined the behavioral discussion with the technical portion, which made the conversation feel natural rather than like two separate rounds. They were friendly and gave me room to talk through my reasoning. For the coding question, I explained the iterative pointer approach before writing it: keep track of the previous node, move through the list one node at a time, and update each node's next pointer. I also called out the empty-list and one-node cases and discussed the O(n) time and O(1) extra-space tradeoff.
Tips from the candidate
Practice writing clean, correct code in a timed HackerRank-style setting. For the technical conversation, review core data-structure patterns—especially linked lists, arrays, strings, hash maps, and edge cases—and narrate your reasoning before you start coding. Be ready to explain why your solution works, its time and space complexity, and what you would test. Since the behavioral discussion was combined with the technical round, have a few short examples ready about teamwork, handling a challenge, learning quickly, and making decisions with incomplete information. The interviewer was pleasant, so treating it as a conversation instead of trying to rush through a memorized script helped.
Company culture
From this interview process, the main thing that stood out was the friendly, conversational tone of the final round. The interviewer gave me space to talk through my approach and the behavioral portion did not feel artificially separated from the technical discussion. I would not generalize too much about the broader company from one process, but the interaction itself felt respectful and focused on how I reasoned, communicated, and handled a basic implementation problem.