Amazon SDE 1 new grad loop: three online assessments, three interviews, offer in five days

AmazonSDE I (New Grad, MS CS)·Seattle, WA, US·Interviewed October 2019Offer

Updated July 16, 2026

This is one of the more complete public accounts of Amazon's new-grad SDE process: all three online assessment stages plus three final interviews, with the actual questions named. The candidate was finishing an MS in computer science and interviewed in October 2019.

Two things stand out. First, the online assessment was a bigger filter than people expect — three separate stages including a two-and-a-half-hour work-style simulation. Second, every single final round opened with Leadership Principles questions before any code was written, which is why the candidate's advice ends up being: give a third of your prep time to stories, not just problems.

How the process went

OA 1 — Debugging
Seven small debugging problems in 20 minutes (C, C++, or Java). Easy to full-score with focus; the candidate got 6/7 after attempting it in a distracting environment.
OA 2 — Coding
Two algorithm questions in 70 minutes — this candidate drew two easy list/tree problems and finished in about 15 minutes — plus an untimed slider-style behavioral survey aligned to Amazon's Leadership Principles.
OA 3 — Work-style simulation
About 2.5 hours: workplace decision-making scenarios, then 25 logical reasoning questions in 35 minutes. The reasoning section is a time crunch more than a difficulty test.
Final interviews
Three 45-minute virtual rounds with 15-minute breaks between them. Some candidates get one round instead of three; this candidate got the full set.
Decision
Offer within five business days of the final round.

Round 1 — SDE

Leadership Principles + coding · 45 min

Tell me about yourself.
Tell me about a time you faced a difficult challenge.
Tell me about a time you needed help from someone during a project.
Coding: design Tic-Tac-Toe (implement the game as a class with a move API).

The candidate had practiced this exact problem recently and solved it in about ten minutes — then made a point of explaining the approach fully before coding and asking whether to proceed with it. With the spare time, the interviewer explored edge cases and asked about an interesting personal project.

Round 2 — Senior SDE

Leadership Principles + design-flavored coding · 45 min

Tell me about a time you proposed an unpopular idea.
Tell me about a time you had to decide something without consulting your superior.
Tell me about a time you faced tight time constraints on a project.
Coding: a Minesweeper-style game — design the APIs to build a grid with a given number of mines, then write a solver API.

The behavioral portion ran long, leaving only about 20 minutes for the coding. The candidate had never seen the problem, got visibly nervous, but structured the API design first and partially completed the solver — and the interviewer was satisfied with the approach. Partial completion with clear structure was enough here.

Round 3 — Senior SDE (with shadow interviewer)

Leadership Principles + coding · 45 min

Tell me about yourself.
Tell me about a time you did not meet a project deadline.
Tell me about a time you had conflicting ideas with teammates and how you resolved them.
Coding: check whether two binary trees are the same — recursive solution first, then an iterative version as the follow-up.

After both versions, the discussion covered time and space complexity and the disadvantages of recursion. The candidate used the closing minutes to ask genuine questions about the interviewer's team and made their interest in the work explicit.

Key takeaways

Give roughly 35% of prep time to Leadership Principles — the candidate suggests two stories per principle. Every one of the three rounds opened with LP questions.
Explain the approach and get the interviewer's agreement before writing code, even (especially) when you already know the problem.
An unfinished solution isn't a failed round: the Minesweeper round was partially completed with a clear API structure and still scored well.
The online assessment stages are real filters — treat the debugging and reasoning sections with the same seriousness as the coding.
Around 330 practice problems over six months, weighted toward the company's known list, with repeated solving of the same problems to internalize patterns rather than memorize answers.

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