After nearly a month of interviews, reschedules, and a few uncertain moments, I finally received the good news — selected for Amazon SDE-2 (L5). 🚀
Around the same time, I also received another offer, which made this phase of my interview journey even more memorable.
Role: SDE-2 (L5)
Location: India
Experience: 2 Years 8 Months
Applied Through: Recruiter
Overall Difficulty: Medium–Hard
💻 Online Assessment
The OA consisted of 2 DSA questions.
I was able to clear the OA, but there was no update for quite some time. Later, a recruiter reached out and asked if I was still interested in the SDE-2 role.
🧠 Round 1 — DSA
Duration: 60 minutes
I was asked 2 DSA questions:
Dynamic Programming — Pick / Not-Pick pattern
Binary Tree — Variation of Children Sum Property
I was able to solve both questions and explain:
Approach
Time and space complexity
Edge cases
The round also included 2 Amazon Leadership Principles (LP) questions toward the end.
Overall, the round went well.
🏗️ Round 2 — LLD
Duration: 60 minutes
Problem: Design a Ride Matching Service
The discussion covered:
Classes and responsibilities
Rider and Driver modelling
Ride lifecycle
Driver availability
Matching logic
SOLID principles
Extensibility
Design patterns
There were also 2 Leadership Principles questions.
This wasn't my strongest round, and the recruiter later mentioned that the feedback was mixed.
🌐 Round 3 — HLD
Duration: 60 minutes
Problem: Design Uber
We discussed:
Functional and non-functional requirements
Ride request flow
Finding nearby drivers
Rider-driver matching
Real-time location updates
Major services
Database design
Caching
Service communication
Scalability
Handling concurrent requests
Failure scenarios
I was comfortable with this discussion, and the round went well.
The final part again included Leadership Principles questions.
🔥 Round 4 — Bar Raiser
Duration: 60 minutes
My Bar Raiser round was postponed multiple times.
The coding question was based on Graphs. I solved it using BFS, and we also discussed how the problem could be extended using Dijkstra's Algorithm.
After that, we discussed:
My current work
Projects
Technical decisions
Challenges I faced
Why I made certain decisions
The final ~20 minutes were mostly Leadership Principles questions, with multiple follow-ups around my decisions, challenges, impact, and learnings.
✅ Final Result
After completing all the rounds, I still wasn't completely sure about the result, especially because of the mixed feedback from my LLD round.
I followed up with the recruiter the next week and finally received the good news:
Selected for Amazon SDE-2 (L5). 🚀
The complete process took around 1 month.
🎯 Key Takeaway
One thing I learned from the Amazon interview process is that Leadership Principles should not be treated as a formality.
In my interviews, LP questions were asked across the rounds, and the Bar Raiser round had several follow-ups.
📚 Resources
A few resources I used during my preparation:
DSA: Striver's A2Z DSA Sheet — https://takeuforward.org/prep-hub/strivers-a2z-dsa-sheet
LLD: Target Trek — Mastering System Design LLD — https://targettrek.in/book/system-design/lld
HLD: Target Trek — Mastering System Design HLD — https://targettrek.in/book/system-design/hld
These helped me structure my preparation across DSA, LLD, and HLD instead of jumping randomly between topics.
I'll share my interview experiences for Mastercard, PayPal, and EPAM Systems next.
Hope this helps someone preparing for SDE-2 interviews. 🚀
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