June–July 2026 Amazon SDE II OA / Interviews: 10 Experiences (Part 2 :)

Continued from Part 1

Part 2 covers the remaining seven SDE II and L5 timelines, then turns the evidence into a focused prep plan.

Coverage: Amazon and AWS · SDE II / L5 · OA, phone screen, virtual onsite, coding, LLD, HLD, Hiring Manager, Bar Raiser, and Leadership Principles · July 11–July 30, 2026

Candidate timelines 04–10

04: L5 phone screen mixed coding and team design

Report date: July 11 · Level: L5 · Result: Rejected

1. Leadership questions.
2. Validate Binary Search Tree.
3. A small design problem based on the hiring team's work.

The recruiter had not warned the candidate that system design would appear in the first round. The candidate believed an overcomplicated coding explanation and an unfinished second question hurt the result.

05: L5 phone screen — LP + Range Module

Report date: July 15 · Level: L5 · Result: Rejected

1. Tell me about a disagreement with your team.
2. Implement Range Module.

The report is very short. It does not preserve the interface, implementation, hidden tests, or feedback, so this should not be turned into a more detailed story than the candidate actually shared.

06: One very hard grid OA question

Report date: July 16 · Level: SDE II · Result: Not disclosed

1. Add one service location to an existing grid.
2. Use eight-direction distance.
3. Minimize the worst distance from any cell to its nearest location.

The complete practice version is available as Minimum Grid Inconvenience.

07: OA combined DSA, AI repair, and simulation

Report date: July 17 · Level: SDE II · Result: Rejected

1. House Robber II-style DSA.
2. AI-assisted repository repair.
3. LLD/HLD work-simulation choices.
4. Leadership Principles survey.

The candidate did not publish the repository, language, test cases, or the exact differences from House Robber II.

08: Five-round SDE-2 loop with coding, LLD, machine coding, and HLD

Report date: July 21 · Level: SDE II · Result: Rejected

OA

1. Passed.

DSA

1. A Koko Eating Bananas-style binary-search problem.
2. Find Median from Data Stream.
3. Two LP questions.

LLD

1. Design Amazon Music search, playlists, and playback.
2. Two LP questions.

Bar Raiser / machine coding

1. Design a distributed recurring workflow scheduler.
2. Four LP questions.

Hiring Manager + HLD

1. Deep dive into prior projects and reasons for changing jobs.
2. Discuss a project that could not finish as planned and a case where AI failed to generate expected code.
3. Design a web crawler in roughly 20 minutes.

The author said the broad question types matched the recruiter preparation email and that OA-to-next-contact timing was roughly two weeks.

09: Rotate/flip OA took longer than expected

Report date: July 21 · Level: SDE II · Result: Not disclosed

1. Sort a distinct array using only rotate and flip operations.
2. Repair a repository with six failing tests and a restricted AI assistant.
3. Complete work-simulation and situational questions.

The candidate did not disclose the exact operation definitions, so the report is most useful as a warning to read the OA contract carefully before choosing an implementation.

10: L5 VO was decided by the open-ended OOD round

Report date: July 30 · Level: L5 · Result: Rejected

Coding

1. Detect whether text contains a supplied keyword.

OOD / machine coding

1. Design a database partition split-and-merge manager.
2. The candidate spent too much time clarifying the open-ended contract and did not finish.

Coding

1. Find the root from directed parent-child edges.

System design

1. Design global service metrics monitoring and alerting.

The author later confirmed the rejection and believed the second round was the problem. A commenter independently reported My Calendar II and Maximum Profit in Job Scheduling in a different Amazon coding round; that extra report is useful context, not part of this candidate's loop.

Read Part 1: OA patterns, question bank, and timelines 01–03