How Should I Prepare for the Amazon System Design Interview?

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#amazoninterviewcoach #amazoninterviewpreparation #barraiser

I'm Nick, a former Amazon Bar Raiser, and today we'll talk about what you should do if you are sitting for a system design interview loop with Amazon.

System design is an area that's likely to be included in the interview loops for multiple job families, such as Program Management, Technical Program Management, Product Management, Technical Product Management, Solutions Architect, so on and so forth. And there'll be different degrees of technical depth in each of these job families, but here I will describe, at a high level, what you can expect and how we should prepare for the system design interview.

Before that, I should underscore very heavily that your Amazon interview is going to comprise primarily of behavioral type interview questions, that are based on Amazon's Leadership Principles. You're going to hear me say this over and over again in almost every video that you're going to see. And the reason behind it is that Amazon determines the fit with their culture and the fit with the specific level where you're interviewing for, based on how well you raise the bar across the sixteen Amazon Leadership Principles.

Secondarily, Amazon is going to evaluate your functional fit, and your technical functional job fit, such as system design for these roles. I'm not saying that system design is not important for the interview. It's incredibly important, but it is definitely of secondary importance, compared to the behavioral questions that you're going to hear. And the answers that you're going to have to prepare in terms of how well you compare to the Amazon Leadership Principles.

So system design is going to examine your ability to create systems from scratch and then scale those systems, up or down per the interviewer's question. So usual questions along those lines, could be things like, please, tell me how you would design a clone to Airbnb, or a clone to eBay, or Netflix, or Uber or Lyft type of ride-hailing app, so on and so forth.

It's less important than the specific area of what the system design is going to accomplish. The Amazon interviewers are going to choose a relatively complex area and a complex environment, where a lot of inputs and outputs are going to have to create a consistent experience for the end customer. So, when you hear a system design question, you should be able to line up all those racing horses. Meaning, what would the User Interface look like, starting from the front end and going to the back end. You can piece this in whichever order you'd like. So, what would the UI experience look like? What would be the wireframes? How would the user flow progress from one part of the experience to the other? What would the networking layer look like? What would the backend layer look like? What would the storage look like? How would you handle all kinds of compute functionalities? What would be the different databases in store? Would there be a customer database? Would there be a drivers' database for the Uber ride-sharing app? So on and so forth. You should be able to identify each of these areas at a high level, with relative ease. And you should jump in very boldly and outline how those areas would interact with each other.

The interviewer might ask you questions to go deeply into any one of those areas, and that's fine. If they do, walk them through what your logic is. Do not be alarmed, do not be afraid to make mistakes. Come up with the assumptions that you need in order to produce a specific and quantifiable response on your own. Come up with those assumptions on your own, without being afraid, and showcase your work.

Again, you don't need to be a subject-matter expert in the system that they're going to ask you to create. You can come from a financial-systems background, or a banking background, and they might ask you to design some sort of an Alexa-based app, and that's okay. Don't be hung up on the specific inputs and elements. Focus on the broad picture, and what are going to be those fundamentals, those basics, that would create a cohesive experience for the user across those different layers that are required for a complex environment to work.

So that would be your first step. You would be expected to walk up to a whiteboard and outline these different layers. Or in a work from home type of interview, you would be expected to sketch those dependencies on your screen. Do not be alarmed, again. Do it boldly. Even if you make a mistake, that's not the end of the world. They're going to correct you if you do make a mistake. As long as your thought is moving in the right direction.

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Introduction
00:14 What Interviews Feature System Design Questions
00:38 Behavioral vs. Functional Interview Questions
01:39 What Are System Design Questions?
03:36 How to Answer System Design Questions
06:10 Parting Words
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Extremely useful information. Thank you!

rodoherty
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Hi i have a question I think I failed the Amazon workplace assessment test which one need to complete to finish the job application. Can I immediately apply for another position or is there a cooling period or something

symbian
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I have one doubt that I have completed the SDE coding interview yesterday. Interview duration was 1 hour. Most of the questions were related to Amazon leadership principles and I was able answer all. But for coding I got only 20 mins and interviewer told he has to close the session. So before I complete the coding he closed the session. Is it because they already made the decision to not consider me for the next round?

creative_shortzs
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Hi Nick, thank you for your videos! I just finished my onsite loop today and one of the interviewers ( almost sure he was bar raiser as he said he is completely from different group and he is just involved in hiring best) asked describe yourself in 1 word and I said I am person with Integrity because I will do great job with high standards, you can rely on me to be professional and I’m loyal to the company. After some research I found that “Amazonian” is best answer to give for this question because that shows you are following all 16 LPs. I know now it’s too late to correct my response, sadly. So what do you think about my answer ? How would you have assessed my answer if you were my bar raiser ? Thanks in advance !

asp
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Thanks for watching our Amazon System Design video!


Good luck and you've got this!

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