Amazon is looking for the best talent around to help deliver on our mission to be earth's most customer-centric company.

Amazon's evolution from website, to e-commerce partner, to development platform, is driven by the spirit of invention
that is part of our DNA. We do this every day by solving complex technical and business problems with ingenuity and
simplicity. Amazonians work in small teams across the company to deliver products and services used by millions of
customers, sellers, and external developers all over the world. We're making history, and the good news is that we've only
just begun.

Software Development Managers (SDMs)

SDMs at Amazon thrive in a fast-paced environment. As the development manager, you will have technical ownership of
various features of Amazon applications. You'll lead a talented and nimble team of engineers to create innovative
solutions as well as work closely with product managers to shape the product roadmap and negotiate features.
Responsibilities include direct management of a team of engineers, process and quality of service improvements, strategic
planning, project management for software within the team, and management of resources across teams. Successful
candidates will be strong leaders who can prioritize well, communicate clearly, and have a consistent track record of
delivery. Amazon requires creative engineering balanced with high quality and customer focus.

Topics to Review

System Design & Architecture

SDMs at Amazon should be able to define high-level architecture, picking the proper approach, such as Service Oriented
Architectures, and others to understand and identify the advantages and limitations of a technical design, and identify
ways to optimize and/or simplify the design. You should understand how extensible and scalable a design is and at what
point it breaks and should be able to use this information to influence and make the right tradeoffs (using frameworks
such as the CAP Theorem, Fallacies of Distributed Computing, etc…) within a project and for future needs.

Object Oriented Design

Good design is paramount to extendable, bug-free, long-lived code. It’s possible to solve any given software problem in an
almost limitless number of ways, but when software needs to be extendable, secure, scalable, and maintainable, good
software design is critical to success. Knowledge of the SOLID principals of object oriented would be beneficial.

Distributed Computing & Scalability

Systems at Amazon have to work under very strict tolerances at a high load. While we have some internal tools that help
us with scaling, it’s important to have an understanding of a few basic distributed computing concepts. Having an
understanding of topics such as Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), map-reduce, distributed caching, load balancing,
data sharding, eventual consistency, etc. could help you understand tradeoffs, provide guidance and influence some of
the more complicated distributed architecture issues you might encounter.

Program Management
You are the primary interface between business and engineering teams at Amazon. As a Software Development Manager,
you will be expected to be able to prioritize tasks, break down business requirements into technical and functional
specifications, work with your team and other teams to define tasks and collaboration, put together a project plan,
manage risks, communicate to stakeholders, and execute the project efficiently and effectively in an Agile environment.
As things change within a project or issues arise, you should think creatively to find solutions and be able to align and
influence stakeholders to drive to a resolution.
Programming & Design
We do not require that you know any specific programming language before interviewing for a SDM position with
Amazon, but knowledge of a prominent language (Java, C++, C), database topics (such as Big Data, OLAP, OLTP), and the
SOLID principle of object oriented design, have been a repeat predictor for success. One of your responsibilities will be
reviewing your team’s code, so it is important to be able to speak to that as well.

Interview Prep
We want the interview process to be collaborative and want to learn what it would be like to work with you. The following
tips are meant to prepare you for the actual interviews:

 Computer Science Fundamental Concepts – It is important to feel comfortable with computer science
fundamentals such as Big O notation (time and space complexity), data structures, and algorithms (fore examples
the various sorting algorithms). For example using the time and space complexity is an effective way to discuss
tradeoffs between algorithms and data structures.

 Ask Clarifying Questions – We might ask some intentionally vague or ambiguous questions. This is done to give
you the opportunity to clarify what’s being asked with good follow-up/clarifying questions before diving into
solutions. This is critical for success as we wouldn’t want you to spend time going down one path only to realize
the interviewer was asking something else entirely. It’s is definitely a good idea to ask clarifying questions in every
single interview.

 Customer Obsession – Start with the customer and work backwards. Our customers are why we come to work
every day and are the reason we do what we do. To understand your commitment to customers we need to hear
you talk about your customers, advocate for them, and champion them. We are truly obsessed with our
customers at Amazon and want to know you are too.

 Think Out Loud – We really want to get an understanding of how your mind works, how you solve problems, what
you’re passionate about, what you want to do, etc., so as much as possible, try to talk things out. Talk us through
the different ways to solve problems, vocalize assumptions, and try to use words to give us a glimpse of how you
process things so we can try to understand how smart you are. And whenever possible, please try to give as much
detail as possible about your specific contributions and what you owned. We love team players, but we also have
to get a solid understanding of what it is you delivered.

 Flexibility—We are fortunate to have some of the brightest minds in the world working here, and chances are
there are a number of ways to approach solving a problem, so if you are attempting to solve a problem one way,
and the interviewer asks you to solve it a different way or hints you in an alternate direction, please try not to be
rigid and instead try to tackle it from a different angle.

Other Info
 We won’t ask you hundreds of questions throughout the day and will instead likely ask a handful of questions in
each interview and drill into the details. We may start with high-level situation-based questions and then Dive
Deep to understand the who, what, when, where, why, how, etc.

 We’re very interested in what you’re saying and want to make sure we can accurately process it, so don’t be put
off if interviewers are typing on laptops or taking notes during your interview.

 If you are provided with a list of people on your interview loop, please look them up on LinkedIn to familiarize
yourself with their backgrounds and interests.

 Hopefully (time-permitting) each interviewer will try to give you a few minutes at the end to ask questions, so
please have different questions ready for each interviewer. We look at this as you interviewing us too and want
you to get all of your questions answered directly from a variety of perspectives.
  No need to dress up – business casual is more than adequate. You’ll be with us most of the day, so please wear
something comfortable.

Leadership Principles
http://www.amazon.jobs/principles

Amazon’s Leadership Principles are the tenets of our company that we use every single day at Amazon and we rely on
them to help us make hiring decisions. Since the interview team is going to be thinking of your responses in the context of
the Leadership Principles, we recommend mapping your experience to each of the principles. The best way to do this is to
print out a list of the Leadership Principles and write down examples from your professional experience for each of them.
While there’s no need to memorize the Leadership Principles, it’s a good idea be very familiar with them and specifically
how your experience relates to them. When coming up with the examples, it’s important to have different examples for
each of your interviewers so we get a well-rounded idea of your experience and background. Amazon is a very data-driven
company, so try to come up with some examples that include metrics or data. There’s nothing better than bolstering a
success story with a great data point.

Amazon is a data and metric driven company. You should keep your focus on the question asked and make sure your
answer is tangible. We suggest the STAR Method.

The Star Method

The STAR method is a structured manner of responding to a behavioral-based interview question by discussing the specific
situation, task, action, and result of the situation you are describing.

Situation: Describe the situation that you were in or the task that you needed to accomplish. You must describe a specific
event or situation, not a generalized description of what you have done in the past. Be sure to give enough detail for the
interviewer to understand. This situation can be from a previous job, from a volunteer experience, or any relevant event.
Task: What goal were you working toward?
Action: Describe the actions you took to address the situation with an appropriate amount of detail and keep the focus on
YOU. What specific steps did you take and what was your particular contribution? Be careful that you don’t describe what
the team or group did when talking about a project, but what you actually did. Use the word “I,” not “we” when
describing actions.
Result: Describe the outcome of your actions and don’t be shy about taking credit for your behavior. What happened?
How did the event end? What did you accomplish? What did you learn? Make sure your answer contains multiple positive
results.

Make sure that you follow all parts of the STAR method. Be as specific as possible at all times, without rambling or
including too much information. Also, eliminate any examples that do not paint you in a positive light. However, keep in
mind that some examples that have a negative result (such as “lost the game”) can highlight your strengths in the face of
adversity.

Amazon Press
Jeff Bezos named top CEO by Harvard Business Review:
http://bit.ly/1oaVzlx

Jeff Bezos’ Top Ten Leadership Lessons:

http://onforb.es/1rkr5LE

#2 on Forbes “Most Innovative Global Company” list:

http://onforb.es/1pUtI9B
Most Reputable Company Award:
http://read.bi/1CFIvuL

Bezos is committed to looking beyond the short-term:

http://econ.st/1yPI24Y

We appreciate your interest in Amazon and please let us know if we can provide any other information to help you have a
successful interview. Good luck with your interview.