Amazon Quality Assurance Engineer Interview Guide

Interview Guide 15 Aug 2024

Detailed, specific guidance on the Amazon Quality Assurance Engineer interview process - with a breakdown of different stages and interview questions asked at each stage

The role of an Amazon Quality Assurance Engineer

Amazon QA engineers are responsible for planning and implementing strategies for quality management. They develop and execute testing strategies for the software developed by the company. They work alongside product and engineering teams to deliver the tested product. Explore related roles at similarly levelled companies such as the Google Verification Engineer and Microsoft Support Engineer guides.

Requirements for Amazon QA Engineer - 

  • You must have a good understanding of white box and black box testing methods, and be aware of SQA methodologies.
  • Have experience in testing applications as well as different testing techniques and know which technique to use in which scenario.
  • Have good communication skills and the ability to understand the needs of the customer to recognize the requirements, design product features, and technical designs. 
  • Have good programming skills and be proficient in languages such as Java, Python.
  • Additionally, Amazon looks for employees who live by Amazon’s 14 Leadership Principles.

- Prepare STAR method stories - Keep doing leetcode, easy/medium, - Prepare for a specific role tasks (SQL, PM, etc)

Amazon Quality Assurance Engineer Interview Guide

The Amazon QAE interview is primarily divided into 3 rounds.

  • The first round is a Recruiter Phone Screen, which is a general discussion about your work experience. 
  • It is followed by the technical phone screen with a senior developer and QA Engineer. 
  • The final round is the Onsite Round which consists of 5 interviews with various executives of the company and covers a wide range of topics including debugging, writing test cases, and the Amazon Bar Raiser among others. 
Amazon Quality Assurance Engineer Interview Process - Infographic
Relevant Guides

Amazon QA Engineer - Recruiter Phone Screen

Overview

This is a phone interview with the Recruiter. It will primarily be a chat about your experiences and interests, following which the recruiter will schedule the technical phone screen. 

Tips

  • Be prepared for the “Tell me about yourself” starter.
  • Talk to the recruiter about your experiences that show that you’re a good fit for the role and the company.
  • Additionally, try to display Amazon’s 14 Leadership skills in your work experience.

Sample Amazon QAE interview questions:

  1. Tell me about yourself.
  2. Tell me about a time you handled a crisis?
  3. Technical questions regarding past projects are also asked.

Make sure you get a recruiter call. Talk to an Amazon recruiter now!

Resume Review

Amazon QA Engineer - Technical Phone Screen

Overview

This is an interview with a senior developer and Quality Assurance Engineer from Amazon. It is a 60-minute interview, which will be conducted over Amazon Chime.

You will be tested on the following topics - 

  1. Database Management
  2. Operating Systems
  3. Data Structures
  4. Basic Coding skills

For additional preparation, check out the Amazon Program Manager and Salesforce Solution Engineer guides.

Sample Amazon QAE interview questions for the Technical Phone Screen are - 

  1. Find the longest palindrome in a given string.
  2. Remove all the duplicate characters present in the given string.
  3. Find the sum of digits in a number.
  4. Traverse from back to front in a given array.
  5. Given an array of N random two-digit numbers, multiply each number with M and print the last 2 digits of each product. 
  6. Give your suggestions for improving a code having Big (O) complexity.
  7. Remove the subsequent duplicate characters in a string until you get a unique set of characters.
  8. Write a function that will print tell the user if a number is divisible by 8, 16, or 32.
  9. Find duplicate numbers from a given array.
  10. Implement the Quicksort algorithm on the given linked list.
Read these articles

Amazon QA Engineer - Onsite Round

Overview

The onsite round consists of 5 interviews that take place over a period of 6-7 hours. The following interviews will take place - 

Round 1: Behavioural Round

Round 2: Testing Round

Round 3: Coding Round

Round 4: Bar Raiser

Round 5: A mix of behavioral questions, test case scenarios, troubleshooting problems.

The description of the rounds as well as some sample Amazon Quality Assurance interview questions are as follows -

1. Behavioural Round - 

For the behavioral round, questions will revolve around your previous experiences. Try to incorporate Amazon’s 14 leadership principles in each of the scenarios your present.

Sample Amazon Testing interview questions-

  • Describe a situation where you had to act fast and consequently sacrifice quality?
  • Have you been able to work on multiple projects?
  • Tell me about a time you debugged a code/reported bugs which played a vital role in the success of the project.

2. Testing Round -

In this round, you will be asked to design test cases for a particular feature of an application/website. 

Tips:

  • Every feature has a different testing approach, so don’t talk about the generic test cases only - devise test cases that are unique to the problem.

Sample Questions -

  1. What are the things to be tested in a Mobile App?
  2. Write the test cases for a given code. 
  3. How would you test an e-commerce website such as Amazon?
  4. Test the download function in an app such as YouTube.
  5. Generate the test cases for a payment page of a website.
  6. Write the test cases for video calling apps such as Facetime.
  7. Write the integration test cases for Telegram.
  8. What tests will you do for an ATM?
  9. Write the test cases for a student registration form.
  10. Give the testing approach for introducing a product to a country for the first time.
  11. How would you test a chatbot for a food service provider like Zomato?
  12. Chart out a test plan for a login screen for Zoom.

3. Coding Round - 

This round tests your coding skills and the interviewer will assess your approach to solving coding problems. Follow-up questions regarding your code and approach may also be asked. 

Sample Amazon Testing interview questions - 

  1. Count the number of characters in a given string.
  2. Given a 2D matrix, find the shortest path between 2 points.
  3. Given an array, subtract a number M from every odd index and N from every even index. 
  4. From a series of numbers, locate the groups of numbers whose sum equals N.
  5. Given a set of numbers, find the leaders in the series. (An element is a leader if it is greater than all the elements to its right).
  6. What is a doubly circular linked list?
  7. Convert the given binary number into decimal.
  8. Given a string, remove the consecutively repeated characters. For example - aabbbcabcbb to cabc.
  9. Divide a linked list into groups of K and reverse the numbers in every group.
  10. Given two strings, find their union.
  11. Check if the parentheses are balanced in the given string.
  12. Write a code to implement a hash map.  
  13. Given a sentence as a string, reverse each of the words without using inbuilt functions.
  14. Write a code to group the positive and negative numbers.
  15. Find the second largest number in the array.
  16. Find the prime numbers of the numbers present in a given list.
  17. Given an array, locate the three greatest numbers and print their product. 
  18. Write a code to reverse a string without changing the position of the special characters.
  19. In a given string containing 1s and 0s, find the number of 1s.
  20. Write a code to convert a string such as aaabbccdaa to a3b2c2d1a2.

4. Bar Raiser Round - 

In this round, questions asked will be related to Amazon’s 14 leadership principles. The interviewer wants to assess whether you’re a good fit for the company and how you interact with your peers and deal with situations at hand. For detailed preparation tips, refer to the Amazon's Bar Raiser Interview guide.

Sample Questions - 

  1. Talk about a time when you took a calculated risk. 
  2. Describe a time when you didn’t agree with a group decision. What did you do?

5. Troubleshooting and Debugging Problems - 

In this round, you will be given a code, and information about test cases, using which you have to figure out the bug and carry out a debugging process. Additionally, you will be given some problems and have to troubleshoot. 

Sample Amazon Testing Interview Questions - 

  1. What is your approach if you cannot reproduce a bug? 
  2. You are listening to songs on Amazon Music, and suddenly the app stops working. How do you troubleshoot?

Want to practice for the interview in a proper interview setting?

Schedule a mock interview!

Frequently Asked Questions