Interviewing for Amazon Principal Engineer — Intro

Focusing on the softer skills of interviewing at big tech

A few years ago, I wrote a post on Quora about interview process for Principal Engineer role at Amazon. In that post, I shared my own experiences as the recruiter owning that hiring process, as well as tips from other Principal Engineers who had been through the process.

Even today, I get weekly emails and messages from senior engineers who saw that post and want to learn more about the Amazon interview. We often end up talking about more than just Amazon. We discuss career development and interview skills in general. I really enjoy those conversations!

Since 2017, Amazon has created several helpful resources to prepare candidates for their interviews. Sharing those “official” interview prep materials with you below. I hope you find them useful. Feel free to share them with your friends who are getting ready for job interviews.

The Original Quora post:
https://lnkd.in/gGVBsJfn

Amazon Interview Prep Repo:
https://lnkd.in/gnnanGCz

Now that you have a starting point, in coming weeks, I plan to write about the “softer skills” that are hard to measure but can really make a difference in interviews.

I will expand on those topics. I will breakdown topics like “technical leadership assessment in interviews”, authenticity, dealing with ambiguity, “active listening during interview”, and other topics. I will write about ‘interview preparation’ itself!

DM, email me on what other ‘non-obvious’ topics you want me to write about?

PS: I’ll try to keep my writing practical and broadly applicable, even though my experience is mostly with Amazon. 😀