AWS SDE building distributed query-engine capabilities for Amazon Athena, alongside senior/principal engineers on Hive, Spark and Presto internals

This role is on the small, entrepreneurial Amazon Athena team inside AWS, building new big-data query capabilities from the ground up on top of open-source frameworks like Hive, Spark, and Presto, with a bar around distributed systems and query engine depth. Basic qualifications point to roughly 3+ years of professional software development with distributed/multi-threaded systems experience, placing this solidly at mid-level despite the high-caliber team.

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Likely format

Amazon's standard SDE loop: online coding assessment, then phone/virtual onsite rounds mixing coding, system design/architecture, and Leadership Principles behavioral interviews (STAR format), per Amazon's well-known public process.

What this interview tests

Distributed systems and query engine design (e.g., Presto/Hive/Spark-style architecture)
Coding fundamentals: data structures, algorithms, testable code
Large-scale, high-performance production system design
Amazon Leadership Principles behavioral interviewing (STAR)
Technical mentorship despite being an IC role

Common question themes

Design a distributed query execution system that scales to petabytes of data

Coding round: implement and optimize a data structure/algorithm problem with complexity analysis

How a distributed SQL engine plans, optimizes, and executes a query across nodes

STAR story: driving a strategic technical project from design to production

STAR story: mentoring or providing technical leadership to other engineers

Tradeoffs in reliability/scaling for a new system built 'from the ground up'

How candidates describe it

Real Software Development Engineer interview stories — retold from candidates' public write-ups, with sources.

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A master's new grad went through Amazon's full three-part online assessment and three 45-minute virtual interviews. Every round opened with Leadership Principles questions before the coding began, and the offer landed within five business days.

Interviewed October 2019 · Seattle, WA, US

Amazon · SDE I (New Grad)Offer

Amazon SDE 1 new grad interview: one OA, four back-to-back onsite rounds, offer

A fresher found the posting through a LinkedIn connection, cleared the OA within a week of applying, and faced a six-hour virtual onsite: four one-hour rounds where every behavioral answer drew three to four follow-up questions.

Interviewed January 2021 · Seattle, WA, US

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Amazon SDE I Interview Experience: Global Selling Team, 2022

A LinkedIn referral bypassed Amazon's usual online assessment for this SDE I candidate, who then worked through a telephonic DSA screen and two technical rounds pairing coding problems with Amazon Leadership Principles questions before receiving no further response.

Interviewed March 2022 · Not specified

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