AWS interviews cover coding, system design, behavioral questions, and Amazon's Leadership Principles. The process varies by role, but most software-development candidates complete a phone screen followed by a loop with two or three interviewers. One may be the Bar Raiser, an independent interviewer who assesses whether you meet the hiring bar.

What to Expect: AWS Interview Process

The AWS phone interview covers your experience and past decisions. Interviewers expect structured answers with measurable results. The loop also includes technical specialists, future teammates, and the Bar Raiser (AWS Careers). Software-role interviews often include coding and system design, and every conversation may include behavioral questions.

Prepare separate stories about customer focus, ownership, judgment under uncertainty, disagreement, and recovery from failure. Reusing one story gives interviewers less evidence across the Leadership Principles. In technical rounds, state your assumptions, reason aloud, test edge cases, and verify the result before you finish.

How to Prepare and Pass AWS Interviews

If your fundamentals are strong, give yourself four to six weeks; if you're rebuilding them, plan for eight to twelve. Divide that time among timed coding practice, architecture discussions, and Leadership Principle stories with concrete outcomes.

• Build a story bank. Use the situation, task, action, result format, and center each answer on your own actions. Include metrics only when you can support them.
• Practice production tradeoffs. In system-design interviews, explain capacity, partitioning, failure recovery, observability, and cost. Support component diagrams with clear reasoning.
• Finish the full question. Write clean code, test examples, and discuss complexity. A promising approach still needs a verified implementation.

Use Lodely to practice AWS coding, system-design, and behavioral questions with a partner in a full-loop format.

Amazon Interview Questions

Recently asked in real interviews

These questions were asked recently in real Amazon interviews. Practice these and 4,000+ other questions from 1,000+ companies on Lodely.

Playlist

algorithms Easy

Given two strings s and t, return true if t is an anagram of s, and false otherwise.

algorithmscoding Easy

Course Schedule

algorithmscoding Medium

Design a rate limiter.

system-design Medium

Design a reservation and payment system for a parking garage.

system-design Medium

Tell me about a time when you went above and beyond for a customer.

behavioral Medium

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AWS Interview Breakdown

Playlist

names = ["song1","song2","song3"], durations = [3,4,2], target = 7

["song1","song2"]

names = ["a","b","c","d"], durations = [1,6,2,5], target = 7

["a","b"]

Type: Hash-map pair search. The Trick: Ensure the two songs are distinct and their durations sum to the target. What It Tests: Data-structure selection, edge-case handling, and linear-time reasoning.

Design a Rate Limiter

Type: Distributed system design. The Trick: Decide where enforcement occurs and how the system handles partial failures before choosing an algorithm. What It Tests: Requirements discovery, consistency, storage, scaling, and observability.

Tell Me About a Time You Went Above and Beyond for a Customer

Type: Leadership Principle behavioral question. The Trick: Choose a customer need that required work beyond your normal responsibilities. Explain your judgment and quantify the result. What It Tests: Customer focus, ownership, and reflection.

Three other questions make up the list. "Valid Anagram" tests frequency counting and assumptions about the input. "Design a reservation and payment system for a parking garage" tests transaction boundaries, inventory, and error handling. "Course Schedule" tests graph creation, cycle detection, and complexity.

AWS Software Engineer Compensation

Reported U.S. median compensation rises sharply by level: about $187,000 at L4, $275,000 at L5, and $384,000 at L6. Equity drives much of the increase at higher levels, so compare annualized stock, vesting, sign-on compensation, and base salary separately.

What Comes After The Interview

AWS says candidates should hear back within two business days after a phone interview and five business days after the final loop. If you receive an offer, confirm the level, team, location, base salary, stock schedule, and first- and second-year cash. Then compare the complete packages.

Candidate Experiences

One recent graduate described a three-step interview process. The first interview was behavioral and included a Bar Raiser; the second combined system design with two Leadership Principle questions. The third consisted of one coding problem. The candidate explained their reasoning throughout but needed a hint and did not reach the most efficient solution. Practice complete solutions while communicating your reasoning consistently.

Conclusion

AWS rewards engineers who can build reliable systems and support their Leadership Principle stories with evidence. Practice these six questions on Lodely in a dialogue format, with room for follow-up questions.