Amazon Internship & New-Grad Interview: What to Expect

The Amazon SDE internship and new-grad interview is a lighter version of the full-time software-engineer process, built around one gate: the Online Assessment. An Amazon SDE intern or new-grad candidate applies, takes a timed online assessment, then sits a short loop of one or two interviews. Clear the assessment and everything after it runs shorter and more forgiving than the full-time loop.

The path is an application (usually through Amazon university recruiting or a referral), then the OA, then a shortened loop of one or two interviews. System design is dropped for interns and most new grads, since you are not expected to have architected anything yet. New grads who pass are hired as an SDE 1 (Amazon writes it SDE I), the entry engineering level. What is not dropped is the Leadership Principles. They are scored the same way they are for a senior hire, in every round.

How the intern and new-grad interview differs from full-time

The Amazon new-grad interview trims the full-time loop rather than replacing it. Interns and new grads face fewer interviews, a coding bar set at medium rather than hard, and no system design round. The Online Assessment carries more of the decision, and questions lean less on scope and impact, and on the past architecture a student has not built yet. One thing does not soften: the Leadership Principles bar.

The practical read: your preparation should look different from a senior candidate's. Less time on distributed-systems whiteboarding, more on clean medium-difficulty coding and on behavioral stories drawn from projects and coursework. The bar you actually have to clear is the OA plus a tight coding loop, not a five-round full-time gauntlet.

Do interns get a system design round?

No. System design is dropped for internships and most new-grad loops, since you are not expected to have designed production systems yet. Your time is better spent on coding patterns and Leadership Principle stories than on system design at this stage. If you do reach a later new-grad level or convert to a returning full-timer, design enters the picture then, not now.

The Online Assessment does most of the filtering

For interns the OA is the real gate, carrying more of the decision than it does for experienced candidates, and so much rides on it that you should prepare it specifically rather than treating it as a warm-up. The full breakdown of every section, plus who gets it and how it is graded, lives in the Amazon Online Assessment guide. The patterns it draws from are the same ones the loop reuses: graphs and grids first, then arrays and hashing and strings, covered in What Amazon Tests.

What is on the Amazon intern OA?

The Amazon intern OA is a work-from-home assessment with three parts. First comes a timed coding section: roughly 70 minutes for two problems, easy to medium. Then a Work Styles survey scored against the Leadership Principles. Last, a Work Simulation. The coding runs your code against hidden tests, so it has to compile and pass. Finish both problems to a passing state before you polish either one, because a half-solved problem scores like an unsolved one.

The non-coding parts are not filler. The Work Styles survey asks how you would act on the job, and the honest, Leadership-Principles-aligned answer beats the answer you think a manager wants to hear. The Work Simulation drops you into a realistic scenario and watches how you prioritize. Students who rush these are the ones who clear the code and still get cut.

The shortened loop

Pass the OA and you reach a loop of one or two interviews, each around 45 to 60 minutes. Expect a coding problem at medium difficulty, and, as always at Amazon, Leadership Principle questions woven through, and know that a bar raiser may still sit in on a new-grad loop, so the culture bar does not drop just because the level is entry. What does drop is the breadth. There is no system design round, and the fewer interviews you do face put far less weight on scope and impact than a senior candidate sees.

Because the loop is short, a single round carries weight. Interviewers often open with a few minutes of behavioral before the code, then circle back to the Leadership Principles once you have a solution running. Treat the whole session as scored, not just the algorithm. Talk through your approach out loud. State your assumptions, and handle edge cases before anyone asks. The habits that read as senior in a full-time loop, thinking aloud and owning your tradeoffs, read as promising in an intern.

The Amazon angle

The single highest-leverage thing an intern can do is treat the Leadership Principles as seriously as the code. A student's first instinct is to grind LeetCode and click through the behavioral parts, which is exactly backwards for Amazon. Prepare two or three STAR stories from projects, internships, or coursework, each landing on a concrete result, and answer the Work Styles survey in Amazon's language. The Leadership Principles are scored the same for interns as for senior hires, and a strong set of stories lifts a borderline coding performance; the reverse does not hold.

When does Amazon university recruiting open?

Amazon university recruiting opens early and fills on a rolling basis. Postings for summer roles often go up the previous autumn, so applying late in the cycle means competing for fewer remaining spots. Apply as soon as postings open, use a referral if you have one, and have your OA prep ready before you submit, because the assessment can arrive within days of the application.

Because the timeline is front-loaded, the winning move is to prepare before the season rather than during it. Get your coding patterns and two or three Leadership Principle stories ready over the summer. Then, when the posting drops and the OA link lands, you answer it at your best instead of scrambling. The Amazon guide covers the coding patterns and behavioral prep that carry from the OA into the loop.

Do interns get a return offer?

A summer internship is the main path to a full-time entry-level offer, so the internship itself works as an extended interview. There is usually no fresh coding loop to convert; the decision rests on your project and your reviews, and on how consistently you showed the Leadership Principles across the weeks. Treat the internship as the loop, not a formality that precedes one. The same behaviors that get scored in a 45-minute interview get watched over the whole term.

What moves a conversion decision is what moves any Amazon review. Did you own your project end to end? Did you ask for feedback early and act on it? Did you ship something real? Deliver the work you were assigned, then look for the smaller improvement nobody asked for, because that is Ownership made visible. Ask your manager mid-internship where you stand, so a gap is something you can still close rather than a surprise in the final review.

Common questions