I applied through college or university.

The interview process for the Amazon SDE Internship was structured and focused on both problem-solving skills and core computer science fundamentals. I had a technical round where I was given two coding problems to solve:

• Find the element that occurs only once: This tested my ability to optimize for time and space using techniques like XOR operations and hash-based counting.
• Zigzag (Spiral) Traversal of a Binary Tree: This problem focused on tree traversal logic, use of queues/stacks, and writing clean, iterative/level-order solutions.

Throughout the interview, I explained my thought process, clarified constraints, and discussed possible edge cases and time-complexity tradeoffs. The interviewer also evaluated how I approached the problem, communicated my reasoning, and optimized the solution.

Overall, the experience was smooth and well-organized. The interviewer was supportive, and the session felt conversational while still challenging, giving me a good opportunity to demonstrate my coding skills and understanding of data structures.

Interviewer asked question based on Amazon leadership principles.