finished my amazon new grad loop in march 2026. l4 SWE, seattle team. i'll be starting in july. spent about 10 weeks prepping and i want to write up what actually moved the needle because there's a lot of generic advice out there.
what the loop looks like for new grad / entry level L4:
online assessment first. two lc-style questions, 90 minutes. mine were medium difficulty. one was a graph problem, one was a string manipulation problem. you MUST submit before time or they don't see your code. learned that the hard way in a mock.
then a virtual interview day: two technical rounds + one LP round + one bar-raiser.
technical rounds: one coding (two questions, similar to OA but with live communication), one system design lite. for new grads the system design is scaled down. they asked me to design a URL shortener. nothing distributed systems heavy. but you need to be able to talk through components: api layer, database choice, scaling considerations. they're not expecting L5-level depth but they want to see you've thought about this.
LP round: this is not softer because you're new grad. they ask the same LP questions. the difference is they calibrate for what 'significant' means at your experience level. a class project or internship counts. just be specific. 'we built X, i was responsible for Y, the outcome was Z'. don't oversell.
bar-raiser: mine focused on customer obsession and dive deep. i think bar-raisers in new grad loops are specifically looking for intellectual curiosity and coachability. they asked 'what's something you were wrong about recently' and i actually had a good answer because i'd prepped for it.
what moved the needle for me: doing at least 120 lc problems, heavy on trees/graphs/dynamic programming prepping 8-10 LP stories tagged to specific principles practicing out loud, not just in my head. the live coding communication is a separate skill.
feel free to ask questions, happy to help where i can.