Complete Amazon interview prep: all 16 Leadership Principles, Bar Raiser explained, coding expectations, and STAR frameworks.
Interview Rounds
5 rounds
Timeline
2–4 weeks
Difficulty
Hard
Amazon's process is uniquely driven by their 16 Leadership Principles (LPs). Every question — even technical ones — ties back to an LP. The Bar Raiser is an interviewer from outside your team with veto power whose sole job is maintaining the hiring bar.
Online assessment (SWE only) — 2 coding questions, 90 min
Phone screen (45-60 min) — 1 coding + 2-3 LP behavioral questions
Virtual onsite (4-6 rounds, 60 min each)
→ 2-3 technical rounds (coding, system design for SDE II+)
→ 1 Bar Raiser round (deep LP + technical)
→ 1-2 LP behavioral rounds
Hiring manager debrief — same day
Offer (2–4 weeks total)
Prepare one strong STAR story for every one of the 16 Leadership Principles. Non-negotiable.
Speak in complete, structured sentences — Amazon interviewers explicitly take notes.
For 'disagreed with manager' — show you pushed back AND committed once the decision was made.
Coding is LeetCode medium: graph BFS/DFS, queues/stacks, string manipulation.
Have depth behind every story — know your numbers, outcome, and what you'd do differently.
Amazon is considered hard to interview at. Acceptance rates at top tech companies average 1-3%. The process takes 2–4 weeks. Preparation depth is the key differentiator — candidates who practice systematically outperform those who rely on talent alone.
Amazon typically runs 5 rounds: Online assessment (SWE only) — 2 coding questions, 90 min; Phone screen (45-60 min) — 1 coding + 2-3 LP behavioral questions; Virtual onsite (4-6 rounds, 60 min each). The total process takes 2–4 weeks. Rounds can split over multiple days for in-person onsites or compress into a single day virtually.
Amazon typically asks LeetCode medium to hard difficulty problems. Focus areas: arrays and strings, binary trees and graphs, dynamic programming, and system design. The best preparation is solving 80-100 curated problems, focusing on pattern recognition rather than memorizing solutions.
Amazon asks behavioral questions tied to their culture. Amazon values Ownership above almost everything else. The LPs probed most often: Customer Obsession, Ownership, Bias for Action, Dive Deep, and Disagree and Commit. They love candidates who took initi... Prepare 6-8 STAR stories covering leadership, conflict, failure, cross-functional collaboration, and initiative. Quantify impact in every story.
The Amazon interview process: Online assessment (SWE only) — 2 coding questions, 90 min; Phone screen (45-60 min) — 1 coding + 2-3 LP behavioral questions; Virtual onsite (4-6 rounds, 60 min each); → 2-3 technical rounds (coding, system design for SDE II+). Most candidates complete the process in 2–4 weeks. Virtual formats have largely replaced in-person onsites, though some teams still offer hybrid options.
Prepare one strong STAR story for every one of the 16 Leadership Principles. Non-negotiable. Speak in complete, structured sentences — Amazon interviewers explicitly take notes. For 'disagreed with manager' — show you pushed back AND committed once the decision was made. Coding is LeetCode medium: graph BFS/DFS, queues/stacks, string manipulation. Have depth behind every story — know your numbers, outcome, and what you'd do differently.
Amazon's highest-volume roles are: Software Development Engineer, Product Manager, Solutions Architect, Data Engineer. Engineers focus on coding and system design, PMs on product sense and metrics, data scientists on SQL/statistics/ML.
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