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Preparing for on-site interview with Amazon Web Services


Forum Post 3 Answers Preparing for on-site interview with Amazon Web Services

Hi. I made it through 2 phone screens with AWS Core Engine team. I'm scheduled for an on-site in the next week, and I'm wondering if anyone else has gone through a interview loop for software engineer with AWS (specifically Core Engine) and can provide a list of areas I should prepare for more than others. Because it's a cloud platform, I suppose anything related to concurrency, load balancing, distributed caching, networking, and general distributed system problems are all fair game. I don't have any real cloud computing experience and don't want to be caught off guard with subject matter that I didn't prepare for. Outside of general distributed system studies, I would probably expect more DP problems and graph theory.

I did go through a Amazon interview 5 years ago, but the bar raiser killed me. I'm expecting significantly harder questions this time around. Any final words of advice?

Thanks!

 - wazzugrad February 07, 2014 | Flag |


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1
of 1 vote

Claim expertise only in things you are confident of. Not knowing DS, cloud computing etc is ok, as long as you show an aptitude for it. If you state prior experience in DS, cloud computing etc, then they will expect more in-depth answers, which display appropriate experience in the field.

Expect them to cover the basic CS concepts/data-structures/algorithms (assume everything a CS undergrad learns as fair game), a lot of coding, at least one system design problem and OOP design problem(s). Amazon folks have an OOP fetish. So definitely be prepared for that.

Be sure to talk of how you will test the code you write. Don't cut corners in writing code, try to generalize a little if you can. Make sensible assumptions about availability of libraries and don't get hung up on irrelevant details.

Good luck!

- Anonymous February 07, 2014 | Flag Reply
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0
of 0 votes

Thanks for the advice. When it comes to coding, is it cool to use C#? I can always fallback to C++ as a backup, but my C# is far fresher at this point. I know Java, but I'm not as current in the latest Java and wouldn't want to get some API, param, or mundane implementation detail wrong.

- wazzugrad February 07, 2014 | Flag
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0
of 0 votes

Yes, language does not matter (as long as it is not too obscure that the interviewer will have a tought time trying to understand).

C# is a lot like Java, and any reasonable Amazon interviewer should get what you are talking about.

I would like to repeat the last sentence here: "Make sensible assumptions about availability of libraries and don't get hung up on irrelevant details"

Don't worry about getting an API, param or some mundane implementation detail wrong. Those are irrelevant details.

- Anonymous February 07, 2014 | Flag




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