Amazon & AWS Hiring Process and Interview Loop Explained

The short answer

To get a job at Amazon or AWS, you apply on amazon.jobs, pass a recruiter or online screen (often an online assessment for technical roles), and then complete an "interview loop" with two to seven Amazonians, one of whom is usually a Bar Raiser from outside the hiring team. Almost every question ties back to Amazon's 16 Leadership Principles, so the best preparation is a bank of specific, measurable stories from your own work, told in the STAR format.

How does the Amazon hiring process work, step by step?

Amazon publishes its own guide to interviewing, and the broad shape is consistent across corporate, tech and AWS roles. Exact steps vary by team, level and country, so treat this as the typical path rather than a guarantee.

Stage	What happens	Typical for
1. Application	You apply to a specific requisition on amazon.jobs (or are sourced by a recruiter)	All roles
2. Screening	Recruiter call, and/or an online assessment (coding, work-style survey, work simulation)	Most corporate and tech roles
3. Phone/video screen	One or two interviews with a hiring manager or team member, often with a coding or role exercise	Most corporate and tech roles
4. Interview loop	Two to seven back-to-back interviews, including a Bar Raiser	Corporate, tech, AWS
5. Debrief and decision	Interviewers submit written feedback, then meet to decide	All loops
6. Offer	Recruiter discusses level, compensation and start date	Successful candidates

Operations roles in fulfilment centres and delivery stations usually follow a much shorter process, often an online application and a pre-hire step, without a multi-round loop.

Step-by-step: from job search to offer

Pick specific roles. Search amazon.jobs by location (for example Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai or Pune in India), team and job category. Apply to roles that genuinely match your experience; recruiters see your application history.
Tailor your resume. Mirror the "Basic qualifications" literally where you meet them. Quantify outcomes: latency cut by 40%, cost saved, customers served.
Prepare for the online assessment. For software development engineer (SDE) roles this commonly includes coding problems and a work-style questionnaire based on the Leadership Principles.
Build your story bank (see below) before the phone screen, not after.
Do the loop. Expect a mix of behavioural and functional questions in every round.
Follow up with the recruiter, not the interviewers, for status updates.

What are Amazon's 16 Leadership Principles?

Amazon lists 16 Leadership Principles on amazon.jobs. Some older pages and third-party guides still say 14; the last two were added in 2021.

#	Principle	What interviewers are listening for
1	Customer Obsession	You started from the customer and worked backwards
2	Ownership	You acted beyond your job description and thought long term
3	Invent and Simplify	You found a simpler or new way
4	Are Right, A Lot	Good judgement, and seeking views that challenge yours
5	Learn and Be Curious	You keep learning and explore new areas
6	Hire and Develop the Best	You raised the bar for people around you
7	Insist on the Highest Standards	You refused to ship something not good enough
8	Think Big	You set a bold direction
9	Bias for Action	You moved fast on reversible decisions
10	Frugality	You achieved more with less
11	Earn Trust	Candour, self-criticism, listening
12	Dive Deep	You knew the details and the data
13	Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit	You challenged respectfully, then committed
14	Deliver Results	You hit the goal despite setbacks
15	Strive to be Earth's Best Employer	You made the workplace better for your team
16	Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility	You considered wider impact of your work

Editor's tip: You do not need a separate story for every principle. Aim for 8 to 12 strong stories, each of which can be angled toward two or three principles. A production outage you led can cover Ownership, Dive Deep and Deliver Results.

What is an Amazon interview loop?

The loop is the final interview stage. Amazon says that, depending on the role, you will meet two to seven Amazonians: a mix of managers, team members, stakeholders from related teams, and a Bar Raiser. Since the pandemic, many loops run over video (Amazon Chime or a similar tool), sometimes spread over a day or two.

Each interviewer is typically assigned one or two Leadership Principles to probe, alongside a functional area such as coding, system design, product sense or domain knowledge. That is why you may be asked several "Tell me about a time..." questions in a row by different people, each looking for something different.

What is a Bar Raiser at Amazon?

Amazon describes the Bar Raiser as an interviewer brought into a hiring loop as an objective third party, usually from a different team, who acts as a steward of the Leadership Principles. The programme began in 1999 (originally called the "Barkeeper" programme), with the aim of raising the standard with each hire.

According to Amazon, Bar Raisers:

assess candidates both for the specific role and for long-term success at Amazon;
help the hiring manager prepare and run a fair, structured loop;
make sure every interviewer's voice is heard in the debrief.

Candidate accounts often say the Bar Raiser can veto a hire. Amazon's own pages emphasise their stewardship role rather than describing a formal veto, so treat that claim as anecdotal. In practice, you will rarely know which interviewer is the Bar Raiser, so treat every round as equally important.

How should I answer Amazon behavioural questions? (STAR method)

Amazon's own interview guidance recommends the STAR method:

Situation: the context, in one or two sentences.
Task: what you were responsible for.
Action: what you did. Say "I", not "we". This is where most of your time should go.
Result: the outcome, with numbers where possible, plus what you learned.

Example questions you should be ready for:

Tell me about a time you went above and beyond for a customer.
Tell me about a time you disagreed with your manager. What happened?
Describe a decision you made with incomplete data.
Tell me about a time you failed. What did you learn?
Tell me about your most innovative idea.

Interviewers will ask follow-ups ("What was the metric before and after?", "What would you do differently?"). Vague answers are the most common reason strong candidates fail. Be ready to go two or three levels deeper on every story.

Editor's tip: Write each story as a short note with the numbers in it. If you cannot remember the result metric, estimate honestly and say it is an estimate. Inventing precise numbers backfires quickly under follow-up questions.

How do AWS interviews differ from Amazon retail interviews?

AWS is part of Amazon, uses the same amazon.jobs portal and the same Leadership Principles, and runs the same style of loop with a Bar Raiser. The difference is mostly in the functional content:

Role family	Typical functional focus
Software Development Engineer (SDE)	Data structures and algorithms, coding, system design at senior levels
Solutions Architect (SA)	Customer-facing architecture, AWS services knowledge, a whiteboard or presentation exercise
Technical Account Manager / Support	Troubleshooting, Linux and networking fundamentals, customer communication
Product / Program Manager	Product sense, metrics, prioritisation, written communication
Data / Applied Scientist	Machine learning depth, statistics, coding, research discussion

For customer-facing AWS roles, AWS certifications (for example AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate) can help your resume stand out, but they are not a substitute for real project experience and are rarely a hard requirement.

For the technically curious: what the SDE loop usually covers

Based on Amazon's published prep guidance for software roles, an SDE loop usually tests:

Coding: write working, readable code in a language of your choice. Talk through your approach, edge cases and complexity (Big-O) before you code.
Data structures and algorithms: arrays, strings, hash maps, trees, graphs, heaps, sorting and searching, and dynamic programming come up frequently.
System design (mid-level and above): design a scalable service, discussing APIs, data storage, caching, partitioning, consistency trade-offs and failure handling.
Object-oriented design (some loops): model a real-world system with clean classes and interfaces.
Leadership Principles: in every round, not just a dedicated one.

A good habit is to narrate trade-offs explicitly: "I'm choosing a hash map for O(1) lookup at the cost of memory; if memory were tight I'd do X." Amazon interviewers tend to reward clarity of reasoning over clever tricks.

Editor's tip: Practise writing code in a plain editor without autocomplete, since that is closer to what many interview tools offer.

How long does Amazon's hiring process take?

There is no official fixed timeline. Many candidates report that the process from application to offer takes a few weeks to a couple of months, depending on the team's urgency and scheduling. Amazon typically aims to give a decision within days of the loop. If you have not heard back within a week of the loop, a polite email to your recruiter is appropriate.

Common reasons candidates get rejected

Stories that describe what "the team" did, with no clear personal contribution.
No measurable result.
Weak answers to "Tell me about a time you failed", or blaming others.
Coding that works but is not explained, or explanations without working code.
Not asking clarifying questions on open-ended design problems.

If you are rejected, Amazon generally allows you to reapply; recruiters commonly mention a waiting period (often around six months for the same role type), but this varies, so ask your recruiter.

Tips for applicants in India

Search amazon.jobs filtered to India; Amazon and AWS hire for many corporate and tech roles in cities such as Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai.
Campus and early-career roles are listed under students and graduates programmes on amazon.jobs.
Beware of fake job offers. Amazon does not charge candidates fees for interviews or offers. Legitimate communication about roles comes through amazon.jobs and official Amazon email domains.

FAQ

How many Leadership Principles does Amazon have?

Sixteen, as listed on amazon.jobs. "Strive to be Earth's Best Employer" and "Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility" were the most recent additions; older guides listing 14 are out of date.

How many interviews are in an Amazon loop?

Amazon says loops involve two to seven interviewers depending on the role, typically including a Bar Raiser.

What is the Bar Raiser looking for?

Whether you would raise the overall standard of the team, judged mainly against the Leadership Principles, and whether you would succeed at Amazon long term, not only in this specific job.

Is the AWS interview process the same as Amazon's?

Broadly yes: same portal, same principles, same loop format. The technical or functional content changes with the role, for example architecture exercises for Solutions Architects.

Do I need an AWS certification to work at AWS?

No. Certifications can help for some customer-facing roles, but they are not usually required. Demonstrable experience matters more.

Does Amazon charge a fee to apply or for a job offer?

No. Treat any request for payment in connection with an Amazon job as a scam and report it.

Can I reapply if I am rejected?

Generally yes. Ask your recruiter about any cool-off period for the role type you applied for.

Sources

Featured image: Andy Li, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source

How to Get a Job at Amazon or AWS: Hiring Process, Leadership Principles and Interview Loop Explained