retail, devices, and AWS
Amazon’s public leadership principles are the spine of the behavioral loop. Coding and design still matter, especially for SDE roles, but stories that do not map to a principle tend to fall flat. These prompts use the public principles as practice themes, not as a transcript. Public candidate writeups usually describe a recruiter screen, a coding or functional round, and a loop of behavioral interviews where each story is expected to land on a leadership principle. Write the principle in the margin of the story before you practice it. If the story does not need that principle, pick another story.
Practice these prompts with an AI interview copilot, or download Luna for Chrome, Mac, and Windows.
Behavioral
Commonly reported
How to approach. Open with the situation in one breath, then stay on your actions. At Amazon, name the tradeoff and tie the result to “Insist on the Highest Standards”.
Practice this with LunaBehavioral
Commonly reported
How to approach. Keep the story under two minutes. End with what changed for the user of a product like AWS, not with a moral.
Practice this with LunaBehavioral
Commonly reported
How to approach. Use a real miss if you have one. Amazon interviews reward the repair and the specific check you added afterward.
Practice this with LunaBehavioral
Commonly reported
How to approach. Say who disagreed with you and what you did with their objection. Do not flatten the story into “we aligned.”
Practice this with LunaBehavioral
Commonly reported
How to approach. Put a number in the result — latency, revenue, tickets, or time — and admit what the number does not prove.
Practice this with LunaBehavioral
Commonly reported
How to approach. If you influenced without authority, name the ask, the resistance, and the artifact you left behind.
Practice this with LunaBehavioral
Commonly reported
How to approach. State the assumption you tested before you acted. That is the part an Amazon interviewer can follow.
Practice this with LunaBehavioral
Commonly reported
How to approach. Credit the teammate whose work you improved, then describe the standard you held and how you showed it.
Practice this with LunaBehavioral
Commonly reported
How to approach. Start from the user of Amazon.com, then the constraint, then your call. Skip the company history.
Practice this with LunaBehavioral
Commonly reported
How to approach. Practice the “no” out loud. Include the shortcut you refused and the slower path you chose instead.
Practice this with LunaCoding / DSA
Commonly reported
How to approach. Repeat the input and output in your own words, then give the naive cost. Only then reach for a better structure for inventory reservation ids.
Practice this with LunaCoding / DSA
Commonly reported
How to approach. Write the invariant on the side before the loop. Amazon rounds go better when the interviewer can see what stays true.
Practice this with LunaCoding / DSA
Commonly reported
How to approach. Dry-run three cases: empty, one element, and the boundary you are afraid of. Talk while you do it.
Practice this with LunaCoding / DSA
Commonly reported
How to approach. Name the search or traversal and the reason. If you switch approaches, say what the first one failed to handle.
Practice this with LunaCoding / DSA
Commonly reported
How to approach. If new data arrives while you iterate, say whether you snapshot or follow updates. Pick one and stick to it.
Practice this with LunaCoding / DSA
Commonly reported
How to approach. For a running aggregate, say the window, the update cost, and what you evict. A diagram of two structures is enough.
Practice this with LunaCoding / DSA
Commonly reported
How to approach. Explain the key you hash and what a collision means for this data. Do not jump to library names.
Practice this with LunaCoding / DSA
Commonly reported
How to approach. Start greedy, then show one input where greedy is wrong if it is wrong. That correction is the answer.
Practice this with LunaCoding / DSA
Commonly reported
How to approach. Narrate the low and high bounds before the first iteration. Off-by-one is the usual miss on rotated data.
Practice this with LunaCoding / DSA
Commonly reported
How to approach. Define the identity you rate-limit, the clock, and the response when the budget is spent. Test the exact boundary.
Practice this with LunaSystem design
Commonly reported
How to approach. Users and API first. For a checkout inventory hold, say the one request you must make fast and the one you can delay.
Practice this with LunaSystem design
Commonly reported
How to approach. Draw one failure domain and what still works. Amazon interviewers listen for what you explicitly will not build yet.
Practice this with LunaSystem design
Commonly reported
How to approach. Put the capacity math on the board with units. Round numbers are fine if every assumption is labeled.
Practice this with LunaSystem design
Commonly reported
How to approach. Retries need an idempotency story. Say what the client sends the second time and what the user sees.
Practice this with LunaSystem design
Commonly reported
How to approach. Split the hot path from analytics. Name the log or queue in one sentence and move on.
Practice this with LunaSystem design
Commonly reported
How to approach. If a cache can be stale, say who notices and how the product tells the truth. Do not hide staleness.
Practice this with LunaSystem design
Commonly reported
How to approach. List readers, writers, and auditors before you pick a database. Authorization is part of the design, not a footer.
Practice this with LunaSystem design
Commonly reported
How to approach. Describe the migration in two phases and the rollback. A long freeze is a smell; say so.
Practice this with LunaSystem design
Commonly reported
How to approach. Name the load you shed first and the promise you keep. Tie that promise to Amazon.com.
Practice this with LunaSystem design
Commonly reported
How to approach. Noisy-neighbor control is a product decision. Say the fairness unit — tenant, user, or key — and the limit.
Practice this with LunaRole-specific
Commonly reported
How to approach. Answer as a software development engineer who owned an outcome. Include the metric you checked after an Amazon.com change shipped.
Practice this with LunaRole-specific
Commonly reported
How to approach. Prioritization needs a rule, not a vibe. Say whose request waited and how you told them.
Practice this with LunaRole-specific
Commonly reported
How to approach. If a metric made the team worse, say what you replaced it with. Amazon hears the replacement, not the complaint.
Practice this with LunaRole-specific
Commonly reported
How to approach. Describe the dependency, the ask, and what you refused to take over. Cross-team stories die when you become the hero.
Practice this with LunaRole-specific
Commonly reported
How to approach. Define the smallest shippable slice and the stop condition. Learning is the point of the first version.
Practice this with LunaRole-specific
Commonly reported
How to approach. Reliability versus an AWS feature is a tradeoff with a user attached. Name the user of AWS and the failure you will not accept.
Practice this with LunaRole-specific
Commonly reported
How to approach. Quote the feedback in one line, then the design change. Skip the feelings recap.
Practice this with LunaRole-specific
Commonly reported
How to approach. A backlog story should end with something you cut. Say the criterion you used.
Practice this with LunaRole-specific
Commonly reported
How to approach. A thirty-day plan should include what you will not pretend to know. Name the person you would shadow.
Practice this with LunaRole-specific
Commonly reported
How to approach. A postmortem needs a system change and a team change. One of them is not a slide.
Practice this with LunaCulture & values
Commonly reported
How to approach. Translate “Customer Obsession” into a decision with a cost. A definition without a cost sounds memorized.
Practice this with LunaCulture & values
Commonly reported
How to approach. Name the tension with speed honestly. Amazon culture questions are about the tradeoff, not the slogan.
Practice this with LunaCulture & values
Commonly reported
How to approach. Pick the value you actually find hard. Interviewers can hear a humblebrag.
Practice this with LunaCulture & values
Commonly reported
How to approach. Use a collaboration or hiring moment, not a speech about culture. One scene is enough.
Practice this with LunaCulture & values
Commonly reported
How to approach. If revenue and the value disagree, say who you would talk to and what evidence you would bring about Amazon.com.
Practice this with LunaCulture & values
Commonly reported
How to approach. Disagreement needs a sentence you can say in the room. Practice that sentence, then the relationship you kept.
Practice this with LunaCulture & values
Commonly reported
How to approach. Skip-level answers should be observable behavior, not intent. What would they have seen?
Practice this with LunaCulture & values
Commonly reported
How to approach. Process complaints need a first change and a way to know it worked. Keep it small.
Practice this with LunaCulture & values
Commonly reported
How to approach. Put the value in the roadmap conversation as a constraint, not a preamble. Then make the cut.
Practice this with LunaCulture & values
Commonly reported
How to approach. “What you would not tolerate” needs a calm sentence and a next step. No speeches about toxicity.
Practice this with LunaThese passed review. The date is when the candidate submitted the report.
Tell us the company, the role, the round, and the question in your own words. Submissions stay pending until a reviewer approves them. Approved prompts can show a Reported by candidates badge. If you leave an email, we can match an affiliate reward — the program pays 30% commission.