Own embedded software for AWS custom silicon at Annapurna Labs

Interview for a Senior SDE role inside Annapurna Labs, the AWS division behind custom silicon like Graviton and ML accelerators. The role centers on embedded software for networking, ML acceleration, and HPC infrastructure that runs across millions of AWS instances, with explicit expectations of technical leadership and architecture ownership.

Practice this interview

Free · a live voice mock calibrated to this exact role

Start the mock interview

What this interview tests

Embedded C/C++ firmware and device driver design
Leading architecture/design of new and existing systems
Networking protocol performance for high-throughput, low-latency systems
Hardware/software co-design tradeoffs
Mentoring and technical leadership on an engineering team

Common question themes

Walk through a firmware or device driver you built, including hardware constraints you had to design around

Describe a time you led the architecture for a system others then built on — what patterns and scaling decisions did you make

How would you diagnose and fix a latency regression in a high-throughput networking path

Tell me about mentoring an engineer through a hard low-level bug

How do you approach reliability tradeoffs in embedded/user-space systems interacting with custom hardware

How candidates describe it

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

Amazon · SDE I (New Grad, MS CS)Offer

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

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

Amazon · SDE INo offer

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

View the original posting

All Amazon Senior Software Development Engineer interviews

All Amazon interviews