Recent Amazon OA and VO for 2026 SDE Intern are being distributed in large quantities. Students around me are receiving interview invitations one after another, and many people have already received offers. At the same time, many students are also paying attention to Amazon SDE 2 salary The market situation - after all, Intern will directly correspond to the SDE 1/2 salary system after becoming a regular employee. It is also your responsibility to understand it in advance.
My biggest feeling after going through the entire process is that the Amazon interview is far more difficult than I imagined - not because the algorithm questions are biased, but because the Leadership Principles questions are so deep and suffocating, and the Coding Follow-up barely gives people any breathing room. If you are preparing for Amazon SDE Intern or New Grad, I hope this summary can give you some practical reference.
Amazon 2026 SDE Intern Timeline
- 3.9OA
- 3.12 / 3.17 Insulation
- 4.6 Receive interview invitation
- 4.10 Small postponement of interview
- 4.21 VO two rounds (60 minutes/round)
- 4.23 Offer received (AWS team)
It took nearly two months from OA to offer. The waiting period was quite painful. I received two insulated emails. Don’t be too anxious. Just wait patiently.
Amazon SDE 2 Salary Reference (2026, United States)
The salary structure of Flax is different from that of many large companies. The base salary has a hard upper limit (currently about $175K–$185K), and the excess is made up by RSU and sign-on. So, when negotiating an offer, the focus should be on the stock, rather than sticking to the base.
General contract composition
| Components | Illustrate |
|---|---|
| Base Salary | Fixed monthly salary, SDE 2 usually ranges from $150K–$185K |
| RSU (restricted stock) | Main float, 4 year Vesting, 5/15/40/40 allocation |
| Sign-on Bonus | Compensation for RSU vesting Slower cash bonus during first two years of employment |
| Year-end bonus | There is no traditional year-end bonus in Flax, and some teams have small performance bonuses. |
First round VO (AWS team, SDE I + SDE II double interviewer)
After entering the conference room, I found two people on the screen, one SDE II and one SDE I. SDE I led the questions and SDE II occasionally interrupted. This arrangement is relatively rare. It is most likely to bring new people or internal calibration. You don’t need to think too much, just deal with it normally.
BQ session (about 20 minutes)
It started with a few words of self-introduction, and then went directly to two LP questions.
LP 1: Missing Deadline
Asked if you have ever encountered failure to deliver on time and how you dealt with it.
The pitfall of this question is that many people will focus on "explaining why it was not completed", but what Flax wants to hear is how you identify risks, how to proactively communicate, and how to re-prioritise. The story I used was that an upstream dependency on delay was discovered in a course project. The solution at that time was:
- Risks were identified two weeks in advance, without waiting until the deadline.
- Actively synchronize to PM and stakeholders, giving two alternatives and corresponding time estimates
- Re-disassemble the tasks with the team and prioritize ensuring that the MVP can be delivered
- It was finally delivered three days late, but the core functions were complete and the stakeholders did not raise any objections.
After answering, SDE I asked: "If time could be pushed forward, at which point would you do things differently?" This kind of questioning is actually a test of whether you have really reviewed the project. I answered that more detailed milestone checkpoints should be set during the project startup phase, and he nodded.
LP 2: Invent and Simplify
Ask if you have ever taken the initiative to simplify a complex system or process.
The point is not "I made a cool thing", but why you think the original solution is complicated, how you found the room for simplification, and what quantifiable improvements were brought about after simplification. The example I used was to restructure a multi-step data processing script into a pipeline, which reduced the running time by about 40% and also reduced the understanding cost for new people to get started.
At this time, SDE II interjected: "Have you considered the risks that simplification may bring?" I answered that I had done regression testing and retained the old version as fallback, and he did not continue to pursue it.
Coding（40 min）
Topic 1: Merge K ordered linked lists
The topic is LeetCode 23. Given K linked lists that have been arranged in ascending order, merge them into an ordered linked list.
I directly said to use the priority queue, and the interviewer nodded to indicate that he could start writing.
Core idea:
- Push the head node of each linked list into the min-heap
- Each time the top node of the heap is taken out of the access result linked list, and then the next of the node is pushed into the heap.
- Time complexity O(N log K), N is the total number of all nodes, K is the number of linked lists
After I finished writing the code, I took the initiative to go through the trace and used three linked lists. [1->4->5], [1->3->4], [2->6] The changing process of the pile was demonstrated once, and both interviewers were watching.
Follow-up: What if memory is limited and all nodes cannot be loaded at once?
This question was a bit beyond expectations. I paused for a few seconds to think about it and answered in two directions:
- External sorting ideas: Load the linked list in batches, only maintain the heap of the current batch in the memory each time, write the merge results back to the disk, and finally merge in multiple ways
- Divide and conquer: Merge two by two, each time you only need to maintain two linked lists in the memory at the same time, and iterate repeatedly until the last one is left.
The interviewer said, "This is the right direction. Can you talk about the difference in the number of IOs between the two methods?" I answered that divide and conquer requires log K rounds in the worst case. Each round requires reading and writing all data, and the IO cost is O(N log K). He nodded and said yes without digging deeper.
Topic 2: Edit distance
The topic is LeetCode 72. Given word1 and word2, find the minimum number of operations to convert word1 into word2. Three operations of insertion, deletion and replacement are allowed.
For classic 2D DP, I directly define the state and transition equations:
Dp[i][j] = The minimum number of operations required to convert the first i characters of word1 to the first j characters of word2
if word1[i] == word2[j]:
dp[i][j] = dp[i-1][j-1]
else:
dp[i][j] = 1 + min(
dp[i-1][j], // delete word1[i]
dp[i][j-1], // insert word2[j]
dp[i-1][j-1] // Replacement
)After writing, SDE I goes directly to Follow-up.
Follow-up 1: Only insertion and deletion are allowed, substitution is not allowed. How to change the state transition equation?
I thought about it for a while. Substitution is essentially equivalent to deleting first and then inserting. The cost changes from 1 to 2, so just change Dp[i-1][j-1] + 1 Change to Dp[i-1][j-1] + 2 That’s it, the rest remains unchanged. He said yes and continued to ask.
Follow-up 2: How to optimize space complexity to O(min(m, n))?
The standard scrolling array optimization uses the shorter word as the column and only keeps the current row and the previous row. Note that when updating Dp[i][j] Before, a temporary variable was used to temporarily store Dp[i-1][j-1] Value, otherwise it will be lost after updating. After I wrote it, they looked at it and said good.
Write at the end
This time I passed the Amazon SDE Intern smoothly. My biggest feeling is that it is really difficult to prepare alone.
From polishing the story of Leadership Principles, to in-depth response to Coding Follow-up, to sorting out the system design details, I have been groping for a long time alone. Later, after finding Programhelp, the efficiency improvement was very obvious. If you are also preparing for interviews at Amazon Intern, New Grad, or other major companies, but feel that the direction of your review is unclear and the pressure is high, you may consider learning about Programhelp.
They focus on providing OA practical assistance With interview guidance, seniors will communicate with you directly and give practical suggestions based on your specific situation.
Students in need can contact Programhelp directly for details. Thanks for reading, and I wish you all can get your favorite offer as soon as possible!
