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Amazon coding interview and online assessment format and difficulty, 2026 update

frontend_fran · 4 replies

Just finished the Amazon SDE II interview loop two weeks ago so this is fresh. Sharing what I found because the info floating around from 2023-2024 is partially outdated.

Online Assessment (OA) Two problems, 90 minutes total. I got: A graph problem (finding the minimum path under some constraint, not plain Dijkstra) A simulation/array manipulation problem that looked easy but had edge cases that would wreck you if you only tested the happy path

They also include a short work simulation section at the end, multiple choice, takes about 10 minutes. It's lightweight and not what anyone is worried about, but budget for it.

Difficulty: both were LeetCode medium equivalent. One was closer to medium-hard. Nothing I'd call easy.

Phone Screen coding One problem, 45-60 minutes including intro and LP questions at the end. Mine was a sliding window problem. Medium difficulty. The interviewer wanted an optimal solution, not just any solution, so if you get to brute force and feel stuck say so and keep talking.

Onsite coding rounds (x2) This is where it got harder. First round: a tree/graph problem with a tricky constraint. Second round: a design-adjacent coding problem where they wanted me to write a simplified LRU cache from scratch. Both were medium to hard on the LeetCode scale.

They use a shared Google Doc or similar, no autocomplete, no IDE. Practice coding in a plain text editor. I'm not joking.

Verdict on difficulty Not the hardest in FAANG. Meta's onsite coding is harder in my experience. But Amazon's rounds feel harder because you're also burning mental energy on the LP questions scattered throughout. Budget for that.

4 replies

pivot_pat

The LRU cache from scratch question seems to come up a lot. I've now seen it mentioned for Amazon, Google, and Meta loops. Is this genuinely common or just the thing people remember because it's annoying?

frontend_fran

Both probably. It's common AND memorable. Also it's a good test: you need hash map plus doubly linked list, it's not trivial to implement under pressure, and it has enough moving parts to show how you handle complexity.

qa_quinn

The 'no autocomplete' thing is real and underrated as a prep tip. I bombed an interview once because I kept waiting for IntelliSense that wasn't coming. Practice in a plain textarea.

newgrad_neil

did you get any SQL or was it all DSA? asking for a friend (the friend is me, and i'm better at SQL than graphs)