Amazon Interview Guide

Amazon is the one loop where the behavioural half can sink you outright. The Leadership Principles are not a warm-up before the real interview — they are scored with the same seriousness as the code, every interviewer is assigned specific principles to probe, and a strong coder with thin LP answers is a common reject.

The coding bar itself is closer to “solid medium, cleanly implemented” than to Google’s hard-problem ladder. Which means the marginal hour of preparation is often better spent on stories than on another hard graph problem.

Crowd-reported, not published

No company publishes its question bank. The round structure and the bar below are corroborated by recruiters and candidates; the problem list is crowd-reported, stale, and biased toward whoever posted it. Treat the pattern families as the durable signal — which families a company leans on changes far more slowly than which individual problems it uses.

Half the interview is not code. Every round pairs a technical problem with Leadership Principle questions, and the LP answers are scored with the same weight — a strong coder with weak LP stories does not pass.

The loop

Online assessment 1× · 105 min 2 problems auto-graded, plus a work-simulation section

Phone screen 1× · 60 min One medium plus LP questions

Loop 4-5× · 60 min Each round is coding plus 2 LP questions

Bar Raiser 1× · 60 min An interviewer from outside the team who can veto

The bar

Answer LP questions in STAR form with concrete numbers, and never reuse a story across rounds — interviewers compare notes. Prepare at least eight distinct stories mapped to the sixteen principles.

What they lean on

This is the durable part. Which pattern families a company favours is far more stable than which individual problems it uses, so prepare in this order:

1. hash-tables
2. tree-bfs-and-level-order
3. grid-traversal-islands-and-flood-fill
4. top-k-elements
5. merge-intervals
6. greedy-interval-scheduling
7. design-lru-and-lfu-caches

Quirks worth knowing

• The online assessment is auto-graded on hidden tests only, so brute force that TLEs scores zero. Optimise before submitting.
• Expect graph-on-a-grid and top-K problems more than pure DP.
• The Bar Raiser has veto power and is deliberately not on the hiring team. Treat that round as the most important one.
• "Customer Obsession" and "Dive Deep" come up most often. Have two stories ready for each.

Reported problems

Read this before you trust the list. No company publishes its question bank. Every "asked at Amazon" list in circulation — including this one — is aggregated from candidate reports, is months to years out of date, and over-represents whoever bothered to post. Use it to choose an order to practise in. Do not use it as a question bank, and do not assume a problem missing from it is safe to skip.

49 problems

8 easy31 medium10 hard

AllEasyMediumHard

Unsolved onlyExportImportReset

• ○1Two SumeasyNeetCode 150Blind 75LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○20Valid ParentheseseasyNeetCode 150Blind 75LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○121Best Time to Buy and Sell StockeasyNeetCode 150Blind 75LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○206Reverse Linked ListeasyNeetCode 150Blind 75
• ○21Merge Two Sorted ListseasyNeetCode 150Blind 75LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○141Linked List CycleeasyNeetCode 150Blind 75LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○242Valid AnagrameasyNeetCode 150Blind 75LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○217Contains DuplicateeasyNeetCode 150Blind 75
• ○3Longest Substring Without Repeating CharactersmediumNeetCode 150Blind 75LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○153SummediumNeetCode 150Blind 75LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○53Maximum SubarraymediumNeetCode 150Blind 75LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○56Merge IntervalsmediumNeetCode 150Blind 75LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○146LRU CachemediumNeetCode 150LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○200Number of IslandsmediumNeetCode 150Blind 75LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○11Container With Most WatermediumNeetCode 150Blind 75LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○33Search in Rotated Sorted ArraymediumNeetCode 150Blind 75LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○49Group AnagramsmediumNeetCode 150Blind 75LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○72Edit DistancemediumNeetCode 150LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○75Sort Colorsmedium
• ○102Binary Tree Level Order TraversalmediumNeetCode 150Blind 75LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○139Word BreakmediumNeetCode 150Blind 75LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○207Course SchedulemediumNeetCode 150Blind 75LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○236Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary TreemediumLeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○238Product of Array Except SelfmediumNeetCode 150Blind 75LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○322Coin ChangemediumNeetCode 150Blind 75LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○347Top K Frequent ElementsmediumNeetCode 150Blind 75
• ○1143Longest Common SubsequencemediumNeetCode 150
• ○133Clone GraphmediumNeetCode 150Blind 75LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○138Copy List with Random PointermediumNeetCode 150LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○143Reorder ListmediumNeetCode 150Blind 75
• ○208Implement Trie (Prefix Tree)mediumNeetCode 150Blind 75LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○380Insert Delete GetRandom O(1)mediumLeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○621Task SchedulermediumNeetCode 150
• ○739Daily TemperaturesmediumNeetCode 150
• ○743Network Delay TimemediumNeetCode 150
• ○787Cheapest Flights Within K StopsmediumNeetCode 150
• ○875Koko Eating BananasmediumNeetCode 150
• ○994Rotting OrangesmediumNeetCode 150
• ○1584Min Cost to Connect All PointsmediumNeetCode 150
• ○4Median of Two Sorted ArrayshardNeetCode 150LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○42Trapping Rain WaterhardNeetCode 150LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○76Minimum Window SubstringhardNeetCode 150Blind 75LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○295Find Median from Data StreamhardNeetCode 150Blind 75LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○297Serialize and Deserialize Binary TreehardNeetCode 150Blind 75
• ○84Largest Rectangle in HistogramhardNeetCode 150
• ○127Word LadderhardNeetCode 150LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○212Word Search IIhardNeetCode 150Blind 75LeetCode Top Interview 150
• ○239Sliding Window MaximumhardNeetCode 150
• ○269Alien DictionarypremiumhardNeetCode 150Blind 75

Pitfalls

• Preparing code and not stories. Write out six to eight STAR stories in advance, each tagged to two or three principles. Improvising structure live is what makes LP answers ramble.
• Answering LP questions in the plural. “We decided…” scores nothing — the Action step must be first person and specific. They are assessing you.
• Stories with no measurable Result. Attach a number or a concrete outcome. “It went well” is not a result.
• Reusing one story for every principle. Interviewers compare notes, and repetition reads as a thin history. Prepare a conflict, a failure, a data-driven decision, and a delivery-under-pressure story at minimum.
• Treating the coding round as easy because the bar is lower. “Solid medium, cleanly implemented” still means tested, named clearly, and complexity stated.

Interview follow-ups

They ask	What they’re checking	The answer
“Tell me about a time you disagreed with your manager.”	Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit	A real disagreement, your specific argument, and — crucially — what happened after the decision went the other way. Committing after losing the argument is the half people omit.
“Tell me about a time you failed.”	Earn Trust; ownership	Pick a genuine failure with your own decision at its centre, not a failure caused by someone else. The recovery and the lesson are the answer; the failure is only the setup.
“Tell me about a time you had to decide without enough data.”	Bias for Action	The trade-off you made explicit, what you shipped, and how you limited the downside. Deciding fast and reversibly is the shape they want.
“Why is your solution $O(n \log n)$?”	That the coding bar is still real	State the dominant term and why. A lower bar means fewer hard problems, not less rigour.

Recall card

• The Leadership Principles are scored like the code. A strong coder with thin LP answers is a common reject.
• Prepare 6-8 STAR stories, each tagged to 2-3 principles. Include a conflict, a failure, a data-driven call, and a delivery-under-pressure story.
• First person in the Action step. “We” scores nothing.
• Every story ends in a number or a concrete outcome.
• Coding bar is solid-medium, cleanly implemented — tested, clearly named, complexity stated.