Amazon

Software Development Engineer (SDE) II Interview Experience

November 11, 2022

Neutral ExperienceNo Offer

Process

First, they asked me to take an online assessment. The recruiter mistakenly sent me an SDE-1 assessment instead of an SDE-2 assessment.

However, they did not ask me to complete another assessment after figuring this out.

After passing the online assessment step, they invited me to a virtual onsite interview.

Questions

Do you have any questions for me?

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 124 interview experiences for the Amazon Software Development Engineer (SDE) II role in United States.

Success Rate

10%

Pass Rate

Amazon's interview process for their Software Development Engineer (SDE) II roles in the United States is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.

Experience Rating

Positive42%

Neutral43%

Negative15%

Candidates reported having very good feelings for Amazon's Software Development Engineer (SDE) II interview process in United States.

Amazon Work Experiences

Lot of learning opportunity

Software Development Engineer (SDE) II • Current Employee

December 21, 2025

Pros: - Good pay - Intelligent peers to work with

Cons: Nothing that comes to mind.

Lot of learning opportunity

Software Development Engineer (SDE) II • Current Employee

December 21, 2025

Pros: - Good pay - Intelligent peers to work with

Cons: Nothing that comes to mind.

Great firm if you love what you are doing

Software Development Engineer (SDE) II • Current Employee

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Pros: Ownership and passion are at the heart of Amazon. So it’s an absolutely great experience if you love what you are doing.

Cons: You have to be always performant and better than most. Otherwise, job safety is a real concern.

Great firm if you love what you are doing

Software Development Engineer (SDE) II • Current Employee

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Pros: Ownership and passion are at the heart of Amazon. So it’s an absolutely great experience if you love what you are doing.

Cons: You have to be always performant and better than most. Otherwise, job safety is a real concern.

Join for the money and exposure, not for a chill life

Software Development Engineer (SDE) II • Current Employee

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Pros: Stocks are going up, which is good. There's lots of potential to continue growing. Lots of smart and experienced people to learn from. Get to work with very large-scale distributed systems that handle millions of TPS. Over time, I learned the skill to work fast and efficiently due to pressure and priorities. If picking a team that's internal-facing (like People/Accounting tech) or a brand-new team, life would be easier.

Cons: Avoid teams that have a heavy operational load, such as on-call. Constantly getting paged is stressful. Avoid small teams. Avoid teams that don't have a lot of business-driven projects, because you won't get to code as much, which is essential to push your SDE promotion forward. Always have a sense that teams over-commit to things, which puts pressure on teams to work faster/deliver more. Not often, but once in a while, you'll see peers getting piped, particularly in teams based in Seattle.

Join for the money and exposure, not for a chill life

Software Development Engineer (SDE) II • Current Employee

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Pros: Stocks are going up, which is good. There's lots of potential to continue growing. Lots of smart and experienced people to learn from. Get to work with very large-scale distributed systems that handle millions of TPS. Over time, I learned the skill to work fast and efficiently due to pressure and priorities. If picking a team that's internal-facing (like People/Accounting tech) or a brand-new team, life would be easier.

Cons: Avoid teams that have a heavy operational load, such as on-call. Constantly getting paged is stressful. Avoid small teams. Avoid teams that don't have a lot of business-driven projects, because you won't get to code as much, which is essential to push your SDE promotion forward. Always have a sense that teams over-commit to things, which puts pressure on teams to work faster/deliver more. Not often, but once in a while, you'll see peers getting piped, particularly in teams based in Seattle.

Lot of learning opportunity

Software Development Engineer (SDE) II • Current Employee

December 21, 2025

Pros: - Good pay - Intelligent peers to work with

Cons: Nothing that comes to mind.

5.0
Lot of learning opportunity
Software Development Engineer (SDE) II • Current Employee
Bengaluru
December 21, 2025
Pros: - Good pay - Intelligent peers to work with
Cons: Nothing that comes to mind.

Great firm if you love what you are doing

Software Development Engineer (SDE) II • Current Employee

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Pros: Ownership and passion are at the heart of Amazon. So it’s an absolutely great experience if you love what you are doing.

Cons: You have to be always performant and better than most. Otherwise, job safety is a real concern.

5.0
Great firm if you love what you are doing
Software Development Engineer (SDE) II • Current Employee
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
May 3, 2023
Pros: Ownership and passion are at the heart of Amazon. So it’s an absolutely great experience if you love what you are doing.
Cons: You have to be always performant and better than most. Otherwise, job safety is a real concern.

Join for the money and exposure, not for a chill life

Software Development Engineer (SDE) II • Current Employee

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Pros: Stocks are going up, which is good. There's lots of potential to continue growing. Lots of smart and experienced people to learn from. Get to work with very large-scale distributed systems that handle millions of TPS. Over time, I learned the skill to work fast and efficiently due to pressure and priorities. If picking a team that's internal-facing (like People/Accounting tech) or a brand-new team, life would be easier.

Cons: Avoid teams that have a heavy operational load, such as on-call. Constantly getting paged is stressful. Avoid small teams. Avoid teams that don't have a lot of business-driven projects, because you won't get to code as much, which is essential to push your SDE promotion forward. Always have a sense that teams over-commit to things, which puts pressure on teams to work faster/deliver more. Not often, but once in a while, you'll see peers getting piped, particularly in teams based in Seattle.

4.0
Join for the money and exposure, not for a chill life
Software Development Engineer (SDE) II • Current Employee
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
April 27, 2021
Pros: Stocks are going up, which is good. There's lots of potential to continue growing. Lots of smart and experienced people to learn from. Get to work with very large-scale distributed systems that handle millions of TPS. Over time, I learned the skill to work fast and efficiently due to pressure and priorities. If picking a team that's internal-facing (like People/Accounting tech) or a brand-new team, life would be easier.
Cons: Avoid teams that have a heavy operational load, such as on-call. Constantly getting paged is stressful. Avoid small teams. Avoid teams that don't have a lot of business-driven projects, because you won't get to code as much, which is essential to push your SDE promotion forward. Always have a sense that teams over-commit to things, which puts pressure on teams to work faster/deliver more. Not often, but once in a while, you'll see peers getting piped, particularly in teams based in Seattle.

Amazon Interview Questions

Two Sum

Find two numbers in a given array that add up to a specific target value, and return their indices. Essentially, you need to efficiently locate the pair that satisfies the sum requirement.

Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock

You're given daily stock prices. Find the maximum profit you can make by buying and selling the stock once. You must buy before you sell.

ArraysDynamic Programming

Reorganize String

Rearrange the characters in a given string such that no two adjacent characters are the same. If such an arrangement is possible, return it; otherwise, return an empty string.

StringsGreedy AlgorithmsArrays

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