Chapter-5: Amazon Solution Architect Interview Process and Overview.
About Amazon Solution Architect Role
- Do you like helping customers solve technical problems?
- Would you like to do this using the latest cloud computing technologies?
- Do you have a knack for helping companies understand infrastructure & application architectures including the integration approaches?
- Do you thrive for the chance to be con sultative while leading the launch of a project on a trajectory to success?
- Do you want to be part of the business development team helping to establish Amazon Web Services as a leading technology platform?
As a Solution Architect within Amazon Internet Services Pvt Ltd (AISPL), you will have the opportunity to help shape and deliver on a strat egy to build mind share and broad use of Amazon’s utility computing web services within strategic accounts and partners. Your broad responsibilities will include: owning the technical engagement and ultimate success around specific implementation projects, and developing a deep expertise in the Amazon Web Services technologies as well as broad know-how around how applications and services are constructed using the Amazon Web Services platform. The ideal candidate will possess customer-facing skills that will allow him/her to represent AISPL well within a customer’s environment and drive discussions with senior personnel within the company, as well as a technical background that enables him/her to easily interact and give guidance to software developers and architects. He/she should also have a demonstrated ability to think strategically about business, product, and technical challenges.
Roles & Responsibilities:
Serve as a key technical member of the Business Development team in helping to ensure customer success in building applications and services on the Amazon Web Services platform. Scope each customer engagement, with attention towards clear and well-defined objectives and success criteria. Own each technical engagement, and help ensure a timely and successful delivery of value. (delivery of actual solutions to be done by Amazon Web Services partners) Capture and share best-practice knowledge amongst the solution architect community. Understand the Amazon Web Services market segments, customer base, and industry verticals. Understand and exploit internal Amazon systems.
Basic Qualifications:
The right person will be highly technical and analytical, possess 5+ years of current solution architecture (implementation/consulting) experience architecting infrastructure solutions using both Linux/Unix and Windows with specific recommendations on server, load balancing, HA/DR, & storage architectures. Experience architecting or deploying Cloud/Virtualization solutions in enterprise customers. AWS specific experience a bonus. Experience working within the Enterprise software market or Internet industries is highly desired. Enterprise application and database architecture a bonus. Strong verbal and written communications skills are a must, as well as the ability to work effectively across internal and external organizations.
Interview Duration:
When you apply for AWS or Amazon solution architect positions it takes around +/- 8 weeks in general. Hence, if you applied for this position and you are in between of interview or plan to start interview process then please have patience for getting final outcome. But as you pass more and more rounds of interview then you can have more confidence and your chances are high to getting selected.
Applying for positions:
You can apply for this position directly online on Amazon Career Websites or if you have uploaded your profile on the Job portal and it matches with the Amazon requirement then Amazon recruitment department can call you or any third-party consultant can get in touch with you for the open job position.
Interview Process:
Amazon has some kind of standard process for interviewing the candidates. Which includes few telephonic rounds, video conferencing and then on-site interview. During pandemic it has changed drastically, most of the interview round happened over telephone and video conferencing. So, you have to be ready accordingly for future possibly as these all are thing becoming new normal.
Amazon has very good and diligent process for the interview and their HR/Recruitment department is quite good and respect the professional candidates, even you are not hired yet. Amazon interview process is well organized from the day one of your process starts.
There are around 6-8 round of interviews, in some scenario it can be more or less. And every step usually one week apart. Let’s assume it for simplicity, you have applied on 1st Jan then you would get first response from recruiter around 8th Jan. and first round of telephonic would be scheduled around 15th Jan and they will ask you, whether you want to prepare further before interview then you can give your date accordingly. (But we suggest, don’t stretch it more. However, they honor your request). You first telephonic round happens around 15th Jan and then this will go for 3 rounds at least each one is one week apart for example 22nd Jan, 29th Jan and 6th Feb. You would receive withing next two days from your recruiter or from Amazon itself for further on-site round. Usually, on-site round happens in a day. And that would have around 5 back-to-back rounds with the various teams in technology department of Amazon. You would have to do couple of white board sessions as well.
Skills interviewed:
Even you are being hired for technical positions, but you will be interviewed for both Technical and Behavioral skills. However, more focus would be on technology like you can say 80% on technology and rest on other skills like behavioral.
Behavioral Questions:
You would be asked questions based on the certain situations as well, this can be part of your technical round itself and not only for the HR round. Avoid answering any questions like I don’t know how to deal with the situation. Prepare well to avoid not answering the behavioral questions, every answer you provide add few points.
Interviewing team:
Team which is taking your interview would be either from the same team or same level in hierarchy. However, number of years of experience can be less than yours the person is taking your interview. But it would be certainly qualified person, who is capable of finding the right candidate for position.
The team which takes your interviews are remain humble, polite and very skilled in the domain you are being interviewed.
Telephonic round:
As we suggested these rounds are highly focused on technology part and considered the screening round. You should remain calm and answer the questions very politely and correctly. Don’t speak anything just for the sake of you have to give answer each and every question. While answering the question be very specific and to the point. Don’t just answer for the sake of you have to answer each and every question. If you don’t know answer, they don’t go here and there. Not able to answer 1 or 2 question is fine. However, to get selected for next round you must be able to answer 95% of the questions you have been asked.
On-site interview:
Once you are done with your all the telephonic rounds of interview, your recruiter either third party consultant or from Amazon itself. They will even tell you many details about your next round of interview and how to prepare for that. And listen very carefully, what they tell you and follow all of them that would make your interview much easy. If required you can ask as many things as you want to your recruiter to get more detail and they do really have most of the detail, because they have been working for the same thing since many years. You have to note down everything what they said and follow them diligently.
As we said previously, there are usually 5 rounds of interview when you are in Amazon office. After or during Pandemic this could be over the video conferencing.
Amazon Leadership Principles:
Amazon has its own leadership Principles, which you must know in depth.
Lunch:
As this is a day long process and if you are Amazon office, you can have Lunch in Amazon Cafeteria and you can sit with the Amazon interviewers as well for your lunch. Don’t speak anything negative during your lunch, however this is not part of your interview. But people remember your behavior and what you speak during lunch.
You can discuss about the company culture, what are the projects on which team is working and what all are the expectations from the candidate. You must be professional all the time.
Hints: If you get stuck during any questions or scenario. Interviewer would provide you some hint and you should be able to understand it. You should not ask for the hint that is not a good thing. Interviewer see if you are really trying and can get the answer, they will provide you the hint. You must be able to design each and every project you have mentioned in your resume, hence practice it before interview process.
Behavioral Skills: Almost in every round of interview you would be asked questions based on behavior. However, as you move forward behavior questions would be more and more.
Past Experience: During the interview process they would pick any project from your resume and ask System design questions based on that. Hence, keep only those things in resume which you can answer it.
About Amazon Solution Architect Role
- Do you like helping customers solve technical problems?
- Would you like to do this using the latest cloud computing technologies?
- Do you have a knack for helping companies understand infrastructure & application architectures including the integration approaches?
- Do you thrive for the chance to be con sultative while leading the launch of a project on a trajectory to success?
- Do you want to be part of the business development team helping to establish Amazon Web Services as a leading technology platform?
As a Solution Architect within Amazon Internet Services Pvt Ltd (AISPL), you will have the opportunity to help shape and deliver on a strat egy to build mind share and broad use of Amazon’s utility computing web services within strategic accounts and partners. Your broad responsibilities will include: owning the technical engagement and ultimate success around specific implementation projects, and developing a deep expertise in the Amazon Web Services technologies as well as broad know-how around how applications and services are constructed using the Amazon Web Services platform. The ideal candidate will possess customer-facing skills that will allow him/her to represent AISPL well within a customer’s environment and drive discussions with senior personnel within the company, as well as a technical background that enables him/her to easily interact and give guidance to software developers and architects. He/she should also have a demonstrated ability to think strategically about business, product, and technical challenges.
Roles & Responsibilities:
Serve as a key technical member of the Business Development team in helping to ensure customer success in building applications and services on the Amazon Web Services platform. Scope each customer engagement, with attention towards clear and well-defined objectives and success criteria. Own each technical engagement, and help ensure a timely and successful delivery of value. (delivery of actual solutions to be done by Amazon Web Services partners) Capture and share best-practice knowledge amongst the solution architect community. Understand the Amazon Web Services market segments, customer base, and industry verticals. Understand and exploit internal Amazon systems.
Basic Qualifications:
The right person will be highly technical and analytical, possess 5+ years of current solution architecture (implementation/consulting) experience architecting infrastructure solutions using both Linux/Unix and Windows with specific recommendations on server, load balancing, HA/DR, & storage architectures. Experience architecting or deploying Cloud/Virtualization solutions in enterprise customers. AWS specific experience a bonus. Experience working within the Enterprise software market or Internet industries is highly desired. Enterprise application and database architecture a bonus. Strong verbal and written communications skills are a must, as well as the ability to work effectively across internal and external organizations.
Interview Duration:
When you apply for AWS or Amazon solution architect positions it takes around +/- 8 weeks in general. Hence, if you applied for this position and you are in between of interview or plan to start interview process then please have patience for getting final outcome. But as you pass more and more rounds of interview then you can have more confidence and your chances are high to getting selected.
Applying for positions:
You can apply for this position directly online on Amazon Career Websites or if you have uploaded your profile on the Job portal and it matches with the Amazon requirement then Amazon recruitment department can call you or any third-party consultant can get in touch with you for the open job position.
Interview Process:
Amazon has some kind of standard process for interviewing the candidates. Which includes few telephonic rounds, video conferencing and then on-site interview. During pandemic it has changed drastically, most of the interview round happened over telephone and video conferencing. So, you have to be ready accordingly for future possibly as these all are thing becoming new normal.
Amazon has very good and diligent process for the interview and their HR/Recruitment department is quite good and respect the professional candidates, even you are not hired yet. Amazon interview process is well organized from the day one of your process starts.
There are around 6-8 round of interviews, in some scenario it can be more or less. And every step usually one week apart. Let’s assume it for simplicity, you have applied on 1st Jan then you would get first response from recruiter around 8th Jan. and first round of telephonic would be scheduled around 15th Jan and they will ask you, whether you want to prepare further before interview then you can give your date accordingly. (But we suggest, don’t stretch it more. However, they honor your request). You first telephonic round happens around 15th Jan and then this will go for 3 rounds at least each one is one week apart for example 22nd Jan, 29th Jan and 6th Feb. You would receive withing next two days from your recruiter or from Amazon itself for further on-site round. Usually, on-site round happens in a day. And that would have around 5 back-to-back rounds with the various teams in technology department of Amazon. You would have to do couple of white board sessions as well.
Skills interviewed:
Even you are being hired for technical positions, but you will be interviewed for both Technical and Behavioral skills. However, more focus would be on technology like you can say 80% on technology and rest on other skills like behavioral.
Behavioral Questions:
You would be asked questions based on the certain situations as well, this can be part of your technical round itself and not only for the HR round. Avoid answering any questions like I don’t know how to deal with the situation. Prepare well to avoid not answering the behavioral questions, every answer you provide add few points.
Interviewing team:
Team which is taking your interview would be either from the same team or same level in hierarchy. However, number of years of experience can be less than yours the person is taking your interview. But it would be certainly qualified person, who is capable of finding the right candidate for position.
The team which takes your interviews are remain humble, polite and very skilled in the domain you are being interviewed.
Telephonic round:
As we suggested these rounds are highly focused on technology part and considered the screening round. You should remain calm and answer the questions very politely and correctly. Don’t speak anything just for the sake of you have to give answer each and every question. While answering the question be very specific and to the point. Don’t just answer for the sake of you have to answer each and every question. If you don’t know answer, they don’t go here and there. Not able to answer 1 or 2 question is fine. However, to get selected for next round you must be able to answer 95% of the questions you have been asked.
On-site interview:
Once you are done with your all the telephonic rounds of interview, your recruiter either third party consultant or from Amazon itself. They will even tell you many details about your next round of interview and how to prepare for that. And listen very carefully, what they tell you and follow all of them that would make your interview much easy. If required you can ask as many things as you want to your recruiter to get more detail and they do really have most of the detail, because they have been working for the same thing since many years. You have to note down everything what they said and follow them diligently.
As we said previously, there are usually 5 rounds of interview when you are in Amazon office. After or during Pandemic this could be over the video conferencing.
Amazon Leadership Principles:
Amazon has its own leadership Principles, which you must know in depth.
Lunch:
As this is a day long process and if you are Amazon office, you can have Lunch in Amazon Cafeteria and you can sit with the Amazon interviewers as well for your lunch. Don’t speak anything negative during your lunch, however this is not part of your interview. But people remember your behavior and what you speak during lunch.
Hints: If you get stuck during any questions or scenario. Interviewer would provide you some hint and you should be able to understand it. You should not ask for the hint that is not a good thing. Interviewer see if you are really trying and can get the answer, they will provide you the hint. You must be able to design each and every project you have mentioned in your resume, hence practice it before interview process.
Behavioral Skills: Almost in every round of interview you would be asked questions based on behavior. However, as you move forward behavior questions would be more and more.
Past Experience: During the interview process they would pick any project from your resume and ask System design questions based on that. Hence, keep only those things in resume which you can answer it.
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