Amazon Software Engineer Interview Experience — Passing the SDE II Phone Screen After Leadership and Palindrome Questions

I interviewed for the Amazon SDE II position on August 29, 2026. The technical phone screen lasted about an hour.

Interview Questions

Behavioral:

3 behavioral questions

The questions were primarily focused on Amazon Leadership Principles, especially Ownership and Dive Deep

I would recommend preparing specific STAR-format examples from your past projects and being ready for follow-up questions.

Coding:

One relatively straightforward coding question based on Palindrome

The discussion focused on explaining the approach, handling edge cases, and analyzing time and space complexity.

For practice, a similar problem is available on LeetCode:

LeetCode – Valid Palindrome

Result

I received the update from the recruiter the following day that I had passed the technical phone screen. The recruiter mentioned that they would keep me posted regarding the next steps in the interview process.

Overall, the interview was straightforward, but I would strongly recommend preparing Amazon Leadership Principles, especially Ownership and Dive Deep, along with practicing basic-to-medium level coding problems and being comfortable discussing your approach and complexity.