Amazon Advertising Software Engineer interview: ambiguous practical programming task

The questions were practical programming prompts rather than textbook-only coding. The first was fairly trivial math. The second was interactive: I had to work out what the interviewer wanted, then implement several functions to make it work.

That second task stretched me because it required clarification and interpretation. I had to check my understanding early and keep iterating until the implementation matched the expected behavior.

I did not get an offer. I appreciated that the challenge was not only hard math, but translating ambiguous intent into working code. Once I realized the second task depended on getting the desired behavior right, I felt more confident in my approach, even though I was not selected.

Location: United States. Overall feedback: positive. Offer status: no offer.