What is it like to interview for a technology role at Amazon?

At Amazon, we pride ourselves on creating and building technology that delights our customers and pushes the boundaries. The reason we continue to do so is the talented technical people we hire and develop.

We sat down with Tom Maddox, UK SMB Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Head of Software Development at Cam Bansal, to find out about landing a tech job at Amazon and what it’s like once you’re in. In Amazon Prime Video Manager.

Why build your tech business on Amazon?

Kam Bansal (Prem Video): Working in a technical role at Amazon makes you feel like you’re working on the edge of innovation every day. Name a tech job, and that position could be on Amazon or AWS! This difference means that it is a good place to grow your career. From engineering and data science to management and product roles, you can build on the specific areas you’re passionate about, or simply find opportunities for future career moves here.

For example, I’ve seen engineers grow from a graduate engineering or software development role and over the years progress into a leadership role, or even a VP position. I’ve had some side career moves myself. I originally joined Amazon Prime as a Quality Assurance (QA) Manager, developing, implementing and maintaining a quality testing system across the entire Prime Video app. I then moved into a senior technical program manager role, working with stakeholders from different areas of expertise (such as finance, marketing, operations, hardware and software) within Amazon to bring a product or feature from concept to launch. I am currently in the role of Software Development Manager where I lead an incredible team of engineers.

Working in a technical role at Amazon means you’re shaping customers’ daily lives. My team consists of software development engineers, system engineers and support engineers who build software tools that allow application developers working on new features to run automated tests and ensure the quality of software they build for most devices at any time. Time, from any part of the world.

We work with over 600 types of devices, including smart TVs, game consoles and connected devices, to ensure our customers can enjoy premium video seamlessly in their homes. I love telling people about my work, even if it’s technical they always enjoy it. I think that since the technology lives in most people’s homes, they interact with it personally!

Now, we focus on live content and events such as major tennis tournaments and Premier League football. When streaming a live event, achieving ‘minimum latency’ is critical for the best possible viewing experience. This means there should be a relatively small time delay between a live event and the video stream viewers see, even on very low-powered devices. Our engineers work to achieve minimal latency for any Prime Video live event so it can be streamed from anywhere in the world on most devices, ensuring that all customers enjoy a seamless and consistent experience.

Tom Maddox (AWS): At AWS, we support organizations across the UK across all industries and sizes – from the fastest growing start-ups, large enterprises and leading government agencies. We provide secure, scalable, reliable and cost-effective cloud services that enable you to be more efficient and lower costs.

My current job is leading a diverse team of solutions professionals who love being on the cutting edge of cloud technology every day. Our role is to provide the best technical advice to our small business clients across all industries in the UK, helping them turn their growth ambitions into real capabilities using cloud computing.

I think data and machine learning are two of the most exciting areas for a technical person to be involved in on AWS today.

One client we have helped is a roadside assistance organization. Green flagIt provides 24/7 roadside assistance services to its 3.5 million users. Green Flag wanted to move away from its legacy system and adopt serverless solutions using AWS. Fast forward to today and the company has significantly improved the functionality and speed of its mobile application, website and overall technology environment.

By being serverless on AWS, Green Flag now has the flexibility and scale needed to cope with unexpected changes in demand and to respond quickly to drivers who need help at any time and anywhere in Europe, which has enabled the company to save an average of 2,000. vehicles per day.

I never tire of helping a business derive actionable, business insight from data and understand what they can achieve with the right systems. Working for a company like AWS means I can empower entrepreneurs and business owners with the tools and skills they need to grow their ambitions.

Amazon is a great place to move from a non-technical role to a technical role. I’ve seen this a few times. In general, there aren’t many barriers to moving jobs within Amazon. Sometimes, we see individuals with non-technical degrees, and some with tech-leaning experience join Amazon in entry-level positions. Often these people make themselves known and their interest in technology, and we can create opportunities and development plans for them. This may include shadowing technical teams for startups and providing customized feedback for independent learning and study.

There are many avenues in technology at Amazon, especially in new technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT) for our connected products, robotics in our fulfillment centers, data science, Alexa to make smarter and more advanced data analytics for personalization and improvement. shopping experience for our customers. Amazon is a data-driven company, and we place a lot of value in these types of roles.

Insights into interviewing for a technology role

KB: The process for technology and engineering roles begins with CV screening and continues with an online assessment, which is a software tool-approved coding exercise. Then if successful you will enter the interview stage. Typically, there are four or five interviews in one day, and the candidate is evaluated on Amazon’s leadership principles and their technical skills.

For an engineering role in particular, we want to see a candidate’s problem-solving skills. We set up a computing task and ask the person to solve the problem and talk to us about their process. This shows us their knowledge of the basics of computer science.

TM: All candidates applying for a role at Amazon are asked to participate in a number of behavioral interviews, and this is true for technology roles as well. However, tech candidates go through specific tech assessments, and these vary depending on the type of role. Some of the most common technical roles at Amazon include solution architects, data scientists, and software development engineers. All of these require a slightly different recruitment process to find the right talent for the job.

When I think of my company, when we ask a candidate, we don’t just look at their technical skills; We also want to know if they have strong communication skills and business acumen. They should demonstrate both their technical depth and breadth – depth of knowledge and skills in one or two technical domains – but also broad understanding and generalization in other areas. This candidate may demonstrate the ability to learn quickly in new technical fields.

For technology roles specifically, Amazon uses online assessments, and for solutions architect roles we may run a whiteboard session as part of the interview process. The online assessment can be troubleshooting, and technically skilled interviewers will review the work to assess the candidate’s experience and skills. When whiteboarding, we’re looking for how to effectively explain technical concepts – and how to tailor the architecture to a specific business need. Otherwise, the interview schedule for Amazon’s non-technical roles is the same.

A special culture for technology and innovation

KB: There are many unique functions that we use to develop and maintain Amazon’s culture of technology and innovation, and these create a fantastic work environment where our technical staff can learn and grow.

One is the ‘backward work’ approach. This means that if you have an idea, you start at the end point where you want to be and work backwards from there. A common exercise is to write a press release including frequently asked questions about the final product or service.

The result is that your final idea makes sense to your stakeholders and external customers, and then you develop the details from there. It is very powerful!

This mindset is in Amazon’s DNA. Jeff Bezos always talks about failing too early and wasting time iterating until we get it right. When this process works, our failures are relatively small and when we get it right, we can fail twice as much hoping to turn it into a big success.

TM: In both technical roles and non-technical roles, every day at work is a day at Amazon. It may sound cheesy but we truly live this motto. There will always be new problems and new problems that our customers want from us. If we stopped listening to customers and constantly iterating and re-evaluating what we do, we wouldn’t be able to create products and services that change the way our customers interact with the world.

Explore Technical roles at Amazon.