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