Prep Plan

Amazon Interview Prep

A targeted study plan for Amazon software engineering interviews. Covers the most frequently asked coding problems, system design questions, and all 16 Amazon Leadership Principles with STAR method examples.

What Is the Amazon Interview Process?

Amazon software engineering interviews consist of 5 rounds: 2 coding interviews and 3-4 Leadership Principles (LP) behavioral interviews. For SDE II (L5) and above, one round is replaced with system design. Every single round at Amazon includes a behavioral question — even coding rounds start with a Leadership Principles question.

Why Leadership Principles Matter More Than You Think

Most SDE candidates over-invest in LeetCode and under-invest in LP preparation. The reality:

  • 3-4 of your 5 rounds are LP-focused — behavioral weight far exceeds coding weight
  • Weak LP = rejection even with strong coding — you can ace every coding question and still get rejected if your LP answers are weak
  • Strong LP can compensate — conversely, strong LP stories can compensate for an average technical performance
  • Ownership is the #1 LP for SDEs — according to Amazon senior engineers, Ownership is the most valuable Leadership Principle for SDE candidates at all levels

Use this plan to cover all three areas, but allocate at least 40% of your prep time to behavioral stories.

Part 1: Coding Problems (Most Asked at Amazon)

Arrays & Strings (High Frequency)

  1. Two Sum - Easy
  2. Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock - Easy
  3. 3Sum - Medium
  4. Product of Array Except Self - Medium
  5. Container With Most Water - Medium
  6. Merge Intervals - Medium
  7. Group Anagrams - Medium
  8. Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters - Medium
  9. Minimum Window Substring - Hard

Trees & Graphs (High Frequency)

  1. Maximum Depth of Binary Tree - Easy
  2. Validate Binary Search Tree - Medium
  3. Binary Tree Level Order Traversal - Medium
  4. Number of Islands - Medium
  5. Course Schedule - Medium
  6. Word Ladder - Hard

Linked Lists

  1. Reverse Linked List - Easy
  2. Merge Two Sorted Lists - Easy
  3. Merge K Sorted Lists - Hard

Dynamic Programming

  1. Climbing Stairs - Easy
  2. Coin Change - Medium
  3. Word Break - Medium
  4. Longest Increasing Subsequence - Medium

Stacks & Heaps

  1. Valid Parentheses - Easy
  2. Min Stack - Medium
  3. Top K Frequent Elements - Medium
  4. Find Median from Data Stream - Hard

Part 2: System Design (L5+ / SDE II and above)

Amazon system design questions often focus on services Amazon actually builds. Study these in order:

  1. URL Shortener — Start here for fundamentals
  2. Rate Limiter — Throttling at scale (API Gateway)
  3. Distributed Cache — ElastiCache, DynamoDB DAX
  4. Twitter — Social feed, fan-out (similar to Amazon’s activity feeds)
  5. Uber — Logistics, real-time dispatch (Amazon delivery)
  6. Ticketmaster — High-traffic event handling (Prime Day)
  7. YouTube — Video platform (Prime Video)
  8. Robinhood — Real-time data, event-driven architecture

Part 3: Amazon Leadership Principles

Amazon behavioral interviews are deeply tied to their 16 Leadership Principles. Prepare 2-3 STAR stories for each principle.

Most Frequently Asked Principles

Customer Obsession — Leaders start with the customer and work backwards.

  • “Tell me about a time you went above and beyond for a customer.”
  • “Describe when you had to make a trade-off between customer needs and business constraints.”

Ownership — Leaders act on behalf of the entire company.

  • “Tell me about a time you took on something outside your area of responsibility.”
  • “Describe a project where you saw a problem and fixed it without being asked.”

Dive Deep — Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to details.

  • “Tell me about a time you had to dive deep into data to solve a problem.”
  • “Describe when your investigation uncovered something that others had missed.”

Bias for Action — Speed matters in business.

  • “Tell me about a time you made a decision with incomplete information.”
  • “Describe when taking quick action was critical to success.”

Earn Trust — Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, treat others respectfully.

  • “Tell me about a time you had to deliver difficult feedback.”
  • “Describe when you had to admit you were wrong.”

Deliver Results — Leaders focus on the key inputs and deliver with the right quality and in a timely fashion.

  • “Tell me about your most challenging project and how you delivered it.”
  • “Describe when you had to reprioritize to meet a deadline.”

Additional Key Principles

Invent and Simplify — Leaders expect innovation from their teams and always find ways to simplify.

Are Right, A Lot — Leaders have strong judgment and good instincts.

Learn and Be Curious — Leaders are never done learning.

Hire and Develop the Best — Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire.

Insist on the Highest Standards — Leaders have relentlessly high standards.

Think Big — Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Frugality — Accomplish more with less.

Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit — Leaders respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree.

Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer — Leaders work to create a safer, more diverse, more productive work environment.

Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility — Leaders create more than they consume.

STAR Method Template

For each story, structure your answer as:

  • Situation: Set the context (1-2 sentences)
  • Task: What was your specific responsibility?
  • Action: What did YOU do? (This should be 60% of your answer)
  • Result: What was the measurable outcome? Include numbers when possible.

Prepare your story bank with at least 8-10 distinct stories that can be mapped to multiple Leadership Principles.

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