The process:

• An Amazon Recruiter (A) found me on LinkedIn and called to discuss a Business Manager position. During that call, she mentioned I might be a better fit for a role one of her tech recruiter friends was working on.
• Amazon Recruiter B called and described this new position, then asked a few technical questions. He said I passed and asked me to apply, sending a link to attend their weekly Friday Meet the Architect call.
• I applied for job ID 1893135 (relevant, because they later changed the job ID).
• I had a one-hour phone interview with an architect from MI. This included more technical and what they call behavioral questions (questions about real-life work scenarios).
• A few hours later, I received an email from Recruiter C inviting me to a full-day interview panel. She asked for five dates I was available and reminded me to attend the Meet the Architect call.
• I provided six dates well into June, but they picked the soonest one on May 18. I had my daughter’s college graduation, and then we returned home sick. I only had time to prepare the presentation, not for any other prep work, though I likely wouldn't have done much more. I had wanted to complete the Cloud Practitioner and Associate Architect exams before the interview, but the rushed timeline derailed my plans.
• Recruiter C sent a long list of tech terms and questions to prepare. She also sent a link to a different SA role than the one I applied for: 1906883.
• Recruiter D held an info-session with many candidates, giving a broad overview of the panel composition, expected questions, the presentation, and that they do not provide feedback. I understood this clearly; it was essentially the same information shared during the Friday architect calls.
• For the panel interview, the presentation came first, followed by five one-hour interviews.
  • Presentation: This was very disappointing. The interviewers were not engaged and did not seem to grasp the complexity of large-scale architecture. I suspect they are accustomed to deploying small applications, not massive-scale deployments. Their focus seemed to be at an application coding level. One interviewer even said, “I don’t think you did anything technical.” I believe this was the biggest indicator for me that this was not the role for me, as I prefer to tackle really complex problems.
  • Four architecture interviews: One interviewer could not stump me, while the last one almost immediately boxed me in on microservices and identified my weak areas. He also asked more questions than all the others combined—rapid fire.
  • I was surprised to discover they do not have deliverables, meaning actual tangible written documents. In my role, I write technical specifications that others refer to. This is not what they do for this role; they just discuss it, and the customer proceeds accordingly. That approach would make me very nervous as a customer.
  • I really liked the architecture manager, who was the former CIO for GameStop. He was very genuine and credible.
  • The salesperson was completely disinterested and seemed to have something more important to do, creating a poor vibe.
  • Panelists were from Oklahoma City, Dallas, Kansas City, and Chicago. None were from Minnesota, where I would be based. This was very odd.
• The interview was on Wednesday, May 18. Their SLA for a response is five business days. I received an email around 6 PM on day 4 asking if we could meet “between” 10-11 AM CST on day 5. I replied that I was in all-day planning sessions but could make the slot work.
• On day 5, at 10:50 AM (50 minutes into the scheduled hour), Recruiter D called. After asking about my all-day planning sessions and stating he had done them many times himself, he informed me I was rejected. He mentioned the panel was very thoughtful but that they do not provide feedback. I replied that he had already covered all of this in the prep call. He then said there is a “two-year cooling-off period” that prevents me from applying for this position again. For unknown reasons, he proceeded to offer unsolicited general advice about specializing in job roles like security to gain experience.
• This was a very strange way to conduct business. I expect an appointment to be kept, for people to be on time and efficient with their words, and for my time not to be wasted. I had already stated in writing that I was in all-day sessions. He even discussed his own experiences and then proceeded to waste more time with small talk. Why? We will likely never speak again.

The good:

• It prompted me to rewrite my resume after 20 years of it gathering dust.
• I created a deck that I can use elsewhere.
• I learned to use a new free diagramming tool called Excalidraw.
• I conceived of a new AWS product I want to launch on the marketplace.
• The speed of the interview process and not being ghosted.

The bad: The response to my presentation, changing job IDs, and the poor handling of the rejection call.

Recruiter Screen:

• RDBMS vs. NoSQL: benefits and usage.
• What is a 3-tier application?
• Describe RTO and RPO.

Arch Interview:

• Explain a VM vs. containers.
• Explain CI/CD.
• Something about topography.
• What are your main strengths?
• Compare availability vs. durability.

Panel Questions:

• Describe a time you improved something at work. How did you do it?
• Tell about a time you received rough feedback.
• Describe a time a team member did not perform their duties.
• Discuss design considerations for highly distributed systems.
• Discuss 3-tier applications.
• Discuss single points of failure.
• Discuss database UIs.
• Compare monolith vs. microservices.
• Discuss RTO and RPO.
• Discuss tiered storage.
• Explain leveraging containerization in applications.
• Discuss load balancing in applications.
• Imagine you are running a website and a user complains it is slow. As a consultant, what would you advise?
• An e-commerce site wants to select a new database. Compare RDBMS to NoSQL.
• For a new product, a social networking platform, dealing with opinion and sentiment data, what solution would you propose?
• What is CI/CD?
• Describe a time you met a goal and exceeded expectations. How did you do it, and what were the challenges?
• Tell about a time you made a bad decision.
• Discuss Snowflake instead of Redshift.
• Tell about a time you did not meet a promised timeline.
• Describe a time you made an important decision. Did you move forward or gather more information?
• Tell about a time you sacrificed short-term gain to add value in the long run.
• Describe something significant you did outside your area of expertise.
• Tell about a time you dug deep to get to the root cause.
• What are the top 3 data challenges?
• Compare ETL vs. ELT.
• Many questions about ETL vendors.