Amazon SDE I Interview Experience: Global Selling Team, 2022

AmazonSDE I·Not specified·Interviewed March 2022No offer

Updated July 17, 2026

A LinkedIn outreach from an Amazon recruiter led this candidate to an SDE I opening on the Global Selling team, which builds fulfillment infrastructure for cross-border commerce. A strong LinkedIn profile prompted the recruiter to offer a referral, which meant the standard HackerRank online assessment was skipped after an initial resume review.

The loop ran across three rounds: a telephonic screen focused on data structures fundamentals, followed by two 60-minute technical interviews conducted over AmazonChime, each pairing a coding problem with an Amazon Leadership Principles question. No follow-up communication arrived after the final round, which the candidate's write-up treats as a rejection.

How the process went

Recruiter outreach
An Amazon recruiter contacted the candidate on LinkedIn about an SDE I opening on the Global Selling team, which builds fulfillment infrastructure for cross-border commerce.
Resume screen and referral
The resume passed an initial screen; based on the candidate's LinkedIn profile, the recruiter provided a referral that skipped the standard HackerRank online assessment.
Round 1: telephonic screen
A 20-30 minute phone interview covering core data structures and computer science fundamentals, scheduled within two to three days of the resume screen.
Round 2: technical interview 1
A 60-minute video interview on AmazonChime with two coding problems followed by an Amazon Leadership Principles discussion.
Round 3: technical interview 2
A 60-minute video interview on AmazonChime with two interviewers, covering one hard-level coding problem and a follow-up leadership question.
Outcome
No further communication followed the final round; the candidate notes that silence is common in Amazon's process and interpreted it as a rejection.

Telephonic Screen

Data structures fundamentals and past project experience · 20-30 minutes

Explain graph traversal techniques (BFS and DFS) in detail, including time and space complexity, and their recursive versus iterative implementations.
What are indexes in SQL?
What are heaps, and what is the time complexity of common heap operations?
Describe the most interesting project you've worked on, the challenges you faced, and how you addressed them.

The candidate flagged graph traversal (BFS/DFS) as a recurring topic across Amazon's online assessments and coding rounds.

Technical Interview 1

Two coding problems plus a leadership principles discussion · 60 minutes

Maximum Points You Can Obtain From Cards (LeetCode, medium)
Maximum Sum Circular Subarray (LeetCode, medium)
Describe the most challenging technical situation you faced in your organization and the steps you took to resolve it.

Conducted on AmazonChime, Amazon's internal interview platform.

For each coding question, the candidate walked through a brute-force approach and its complexity before presenting the optimal solution.

Technical Interview 2

Single hard-level coding problem with two interviewers, plus a leadership question · 60 minutes

Given a matrix, two traversals start at the top-left and top-right corners and move toward the bottom row, each step allowed to go down-left, straight down, or down-right, collecting the value of each cell visited; if both traversals pass through the same cell, only one can count that cell's value. Find the maximum total value collectible.
A follow-up Amazon Leadership Principles question.

The candidate identified that dynamic programming was needed but ran out of time to complete that solution, and ended up writing only the brute-force (exponential) approach before time ran out.

Key takeaways

Graph traversal (BFS/DFS) came up repeatedly across the process — know both recursive and iterative implementations along with their time and space complexity.
Structure coding answers around constraints, corner cases, a brute-force pass, and then the optimal solution, rather than jumping straight to the optimal approach.
Prepare Amazon Leadership Principles answers ahead of time using the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) format, since every technical round included a leadership question.
Practice explaining your reasoning out loud while solving, since interviewers may help nudge you toward an optimization if you get stuck.
A lack of follow-up communication after a final round is common in Amazon's hiring process and is often the only signal candidates get about the outcome.

Practice a Amazon interview

Rehearse out loud against the kinds of questions in this story — with an AI interviewer that asks follow-ups.

Practice this interview

Source

The questions and process facts come from the candidate's public write-up, linked below. The retelling above is our own summary.

Candidate's public write-up on LeetCode Discuss