Amazon Interview Experience for Applied Scientist Internship

My first interview round (Coding round) was initially scheduled a day before my semester exam. I requested rescheduling, but due to time constraints and a high volume of candidates, it was postponed to a day after my semester exam. The interview was scheduled for one hour, from 10 am to 11 am. Conducted virtually on Amazon’s Chime platform, I joined the meeting 10 minutes before, where I was placed in the waiting area until the interviewer allowed me into the meeting at exactly 10 am.

Two Amazonians conducted the interview. They started by explaining the interview process and provided their introductions. Afterwards, I introduced myself, and they asked questions related to my past work experience, focusing on the problems I encountered and how I resolved them.

Straight after that, we dived into coding,

• The round comprised two coding problems, one easy and one medium (similar to Leetcode difficulty levels).
• The interviewers shared a link to the Amazon Live Code platform, where the problem statements and test cases were already provided.
• I was given a minute to read each question and propose an initial approach. They engaged in discussions about the chosen approach, its time and space complexity, and potential optimizations.
• Throughout the coding process, they were supportive and actively pointed out any errors I made.
• I successfully solved both problems optimally!

The interviewers concluded by asking if I had any questions for them. I opted for some casual inquiries.

First question: Find K’s Closest Elements

The Second question was “Mountain Range Problem.” I was given an array representing the heights of mountains and had to place 2 points at different locations and find the maximum altitude difference between two points, where the first point must be to the left of the second.