# Amazon Engineering Manager Interview Experiences Aced (formerly Exponent) publishes a public search API over its indexed pages; the guide is at https://www.aced.io/agents/agent-access. Source: https://www.aced.io/guides/amazon-software-development-manager-interview/experiences Source observed: 2026-11-04T21:43:16.313Z Last checked: 2026-11-04T21:43:16.313+00:00 Indexed: 2026-11-05T04:34:41.485+00:00 --- # Amazon Engineering Manager Interview Experiences We provide a collection of real interview experiences from candidates who went through Amazon Engineering Manager interviews. The page belongs to our **Amazon Software Development Manager (SDM) Interview Guide** and includes tabs for the [expert guide](https://www.aced.io/guides/amazon-software-development-manager-interview), [interview experiences](https://www.aced.io/guides/amazon-software-development-manager-interview/experiences), [79 questions](https://www.aced.io/guides/amazon-software-development-manager-interview/questions), and [resumes](https://www.aced.io/guides/amazon-software-development-manager-interview/resumes). It was updated a month ago by Amazon candidates. ![Amazon logo](https://exponent-static.s3.amazonaws.com/company_logos/amazon.png) ## Candidate experiences ### Engineering Manager — Amazon Staff / L6, India - **Submitted:** September 19, 2026 - **Interview timing:** July 2026 - **Format:** Hybrid - **Status:** In progress - **Difficulty:** Moderate The candidate said the process had gone well so far and that all rounds were strongly aligned with Amazon Leadership Principles. Their preparation advice was to use the STAR format and avoid describing details they had not worked on deeply. Questions shown: - [Tell me about a time when you solved a complex problem and how you went about it.](https://www.aced.io/questions/107) - [What are you most proud of in your career?](https://www.aced.io/questions/447) - [Tell me about the most complex project you have led.](https://www.aced.io/questions/611) - [6 more questions and the full experience](https://www.aced.io/experiences/amazon-staff-engineering-manager-interview-f9bcf1?returnPath=%2Fguides%2Famazon-software-development-manager-interview%2Fexperiences) ### Engineering Manager — Amazon Staff / L6, United States - **Submitted:** July 30, 2026 - **Interview timing:** April 2026 - **Format:** Onsite - **Status:** Rejected - **Difficulty:** Difficult The candidate described a recruiter screen, a technical call with the hiring manager, a written narrative exercise, and a five-round virtual loop covering System Design, People Management, Operational Excellence, Cross-Functional Leadership, and a Bar Raiser round. Each module heavily tested Amazon Leadership Principles using the STAR method. The candidate said structured, data-driven answers worked well when they focused on their direct actions as a leader and tied results to concrete business metrics. They described examples involving Customer Obsession, Hire and Develop the Best, team growth, performance management, architecture trade-offs, and balancing business strategy with technical depth during system-design discussions. The candidate also described difficulties: using “we” instead of “I” when crediting the team, which led interviewers to ask for individual contributions; spending too much time explaining the background of an operational failure and leaving too little time for preventative fixes; and focusing too narrowly on optimizing one database schema before outlining the complete end-to-end architecture. Questions shown: - Tell me about a time when you took on a task outside your job description. - Tell me about your past projects. - Design Twitch or any live streaming platform. - [5 more questions and the full experience](https://www.aced.io/experiences/amazon-staff-engineering-manager-interview-f9bcf1?returnPath=%2Fguides%2Famazon-software-development-manager-interview%2Fexperiences) ### Additional Engineering Manager experience One candidate was surprised by the volume of questions in the management screen. They compared it with an Amazon interview from three or four years earlier, which had involved three or four questions, and said that this screen was split approximately evenly between behavioral questions and management-framework or philosophical questions. Questions shown: - Describe the most complex distributed system you've designed or led the development of. What was the scale (for example, traffic volume, global regions, or number of services), and what was your specific role in the architecture decisions? - How many engineers have you directly managed, and for how long? Share a specific example of how you developed or coached an engineer on your team, whether through a performance conversation, a stretch assignment, or a career development discussion. - Can you describe a project where your team owned a critical, high-stakes backend system—one where reliability, accuracy, or scale really mattered? What was your role, and what were the key engineering challenges you navigated? ### Another Engineering Manager experience Questions shown: - How would you address a performance decline in a program? - Design a URL shortener. ## Access to all experiences We offer trial access when candidates [share their own interview experience](https://www.aced.io/questions/contribute?src=guide). 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