Amazon SDE-1 off-campus — a loop that ran February to July

## Background
I applied off-campus in November, but the loop didn't start until February and ran to July. Amazon seems to hold on to promising profiles and revisit them when an opening appears rather than closing them out.

## Online assessment
Two DSA problems plus a separate work-style/behavioural assessment. For the work-style section I kept answers aligned with Amazon's **Leadership Principles**.

## Round format
Roughly 45 minutes of coding (usually two problems, medium to medium-hard) followed by 10–15 minutes of Leadership Principles questions.

## Round-by-round

### Round 1
A 2D matrix/graph problem, plus a second question needing a **line sweep** approach.

### Round 2 — first attempt
A string problem alongside one requiring a **monotonic stack**.

### Round 2 — repeated
Rescheduling on their end meant this round was redone from scratch, and it was noticeably tougher: a **priority queue** problem plus a design question in the spirit of a bill-splitting app.

### Round 3 — final
Conducted by a principal engineer, with no coding at all. Entirely focused on past experience, internship projects and the reasoning behind specific design choices.

## Verdict
**Selected** — joined the Amazon Music team.