Amazon SDE-1 vs SDE-2 vs SDE-3 Interview: What Each Level Is Tested On (Prep Checklist)
At Amazon, every level jump roughly doubles your pay. But every level is also tested differently. If you prepare for SDE-2 the way you'd prepare for SDE-1, you'll most likely get an SDE-1 offer.
This page is a simple checklist: find your level, tick the boxes, and practise with the free links in each section.
Pay at Each Amazon Level (India)
| Level | Amazon code | Typical total pay / year | Main thing they test |
|---|---|---|---|
| SDE-1 | L4 | ≈ ₹30 L | Clean code, explained out loud |
| SDE-2 | L5 | ≈ ₹62 L | Coding + system design + owning a feature |
| SDE-3 | L6 | ≈ ₹1.3 Cr | Judgment: trade-offs, influence, saying no |
| Principal | L7 | ≈ ₹2.0 Cr | Direction for many teams (not covered here) |
Medians from levels.fyi for Amazon India, November 2026. "Total pay" means salary + bonus + stock, averaged per year. Your offer can be higher or lower. For the full pay breakdown, see our Amazon salary by level guide.
Why this matters: getting down-leveled from SDE-2 to SDE-1 costs about ₹32 L a year for the same job hunt. Amazon decides your level from how you answer, not just whether you solve the problem.
How the Amazon Interview Loop Works (All Levels)
- Before the loop: an online coding test or a phone screen, usually 1–2 coding problems.
- The loop: usually 4–5 one-hour rounds. Each round mixes a technical part with Leadership Principle (LP) questions like "Tell me about a time…". (Amazon has 16 Leadership Principles, the values it hires for. Here they are in simple words.)
- The bar raiser: every Amazon loop has one. It's an experienced interviewer from another team who asks one question: "Will this person raise the average of the team?" They can block an offer on their own.
- The level is decided at the end: the interviewers meet and agree on hire or no hire, and on the level. This is where down-leveling happens.
SDE-1 (L4) Checklist: Clean Code
What they check: can you write correct, clean code and explain your thinking while you do it? Usually 2–3 coding rounds, plus LP stories.
- I can solve medium problems on arrays, strings, hash maps, trees and graphs in about 30 minutes.
- I know the basics of dynamic programming (1D and simple 2D).
- I talk out loud: I say my idea and its time/space cost, then I code. No silent typing.
- I test my own code with a small example and an edge case (empty input, one element, duplicates).
- I ask 1–2 clarifying questions before coding (How big is the input? Is it sorted? Are duplicates allowed?).
- I have LP stories for Ownership, Customer Obsession, Learn and Be Curious and Dive Deep. College or internship projects are fine.
Practise on InterviewSkool (free):
- 50 real Amazon coding interview questions (13 easy, 30 medium, 7 hard), all free
- Full DSA problem list by topic
- Topic guides: arrays & strings · hash maps · two pointers · sliding window · trees & graphs · BFS vs DFS · dynamic programming · heaps
- How to answer "Tell me about a time…": the STAR method
Red flag: "I'll just code it" with no plan, then 10 minutes of silent typing.
SDE-2 (L5) Checklist: Adds System Design
What they check: everything from SDE-1, plus a system design round, plus proof that you've owned a feature from start to finish.
- All the SDE-1 boxes above, done faster and with fewer hints.
- In a design round I can: list the requirements → estimate the numbers (users, requests per second, storage) → draw a simple design → go deep on the hardest part.
- I can design the APIs and the data model (tables, keys, which database and why).
- I know when to use a cache, a queue, sharding (splitting data across many databases) and a load balancer, and what each one costs you.
- I've practised at least 5 full designs out loud, 45 minutes each. For example, a notification service.
- I have LP stories where I owned a feature end to end: the problem, my design, the launch, and the numbers after (Deliver Results, Bias for Action, Insist on the Highest Standards).
Practise on InterviewSkool (free):
- 23 real Amazon system design interview questions, reported by candidates from Sept 2025 to Sept 2026, each with a full solution
- Start with these case studies: notification service · URL shortener · rate limiter · likes counter · food delivery (all case studies)
- The building blocks: what is system design · caching · message queues · sharding · load balancing · SQL vs NoSQL
- Ownership stories: how to answer "Tell me about a time"
- More on this level: how to prepare for SDE-2 interviews
Red flag: naming tools ("Kafka, Redis, Kubernetes") without saying why. Or stories that say "we did" and never "I did".
SDE-3 (L6) Checklist: Judgment
What they check: not more buzzwords, but better judgment. Deeper trade-offs, and stories about leading people who don't report to you.
- In design rounds I drive the interview: I pick the hardest part myself and go deep without being asked.
- For every big choice I give two options and why I picked one (for example push vs pull, or strong vs eventual consistency).
- I talk about what breaks: hot keys, a region going down, retries causing duplicates, and how I'd notice (metrics, alerts).
- I can design for very large scale: millions of users, many regions, and cost.
- I have a story about influencing another team to change their plan (Earn Trust, Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit).
- I have a story about handling an outage: what happened, what I did, and what I changed so it doesn't happen again.
- I have a story about saying no to the wrong project and what we did instead (Are Right, A Lot, Think Big).
- I have a story about growing other engineers (Hire and Develop the Best).
Practise on InterviewSkool (free):
- Harder case studies with deep dives: cache hot keys · key-value store · Uber · Instagram · WhatsApp live location
- Trade-off guides: CAP theorem · consistent hashing · rate limiting · CDN
- Leadership stories: showing leadership in interviews
Red flag: a perfect diagram with no trade-offs. Or stories where you only did your own tasks well. At SDE-3 that reads as a strong SDE-2.
Your Leadership Principle Story Bank
Write 6–8 stories and reuse them across rounds. Each one should follow the STAR shape: Situation → Task → Action (what you did) → Result (with a number). Pick the right size of story for your level.
| Principle | SDE-1 story | SDE-2 story | SDE-3 story |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ownership | Fixed a bug nobody owned | Owned a feature, from launch to metrics | Owned a problem across teams |
| Customer Obsession | Changed something after user feedback | Used data to change a product plan | Pushed back on a launch that hurt users |
| Dive Deep | Found the real cause of a bug | Debugged a hard production issue | Led an outage review and fixed the root cause |
| Deliver Results | Finished a project on time | Shipped despite a big blocker | Delivered a multi-team project |
| Disagree and Commit | Disagreed with a teammate politely | Disagreed with your manager, with data | Changed another team's plan |
| Hire and Develop | Helped a new joiner | Mentored an intern | Grew engineers, ran interviews |
More help: Amazon behavioral interview questions · common behavioral questions · tell me about yourself · why this company
Quick Self-Check: Which Level Are You Ready For?
| Question | SDE-1 | SDE-2 | SDE-3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Can you solve a medium coding problem in 30 minutes, out loud? | must | must | must |
| Can you design a notification service in 45 minutes? | nice | must | must |
| Do you give 2 options and a reason for every big choice? | – | nice | must |
| Do your stories show you owned a feature end to end? | nice | must | must |
| Do your stories show you changed other teams' minds? | – | nice | must |
If you can't tick every must for the level you're applying to, that's your prep list. Go back to that level's checklist above.
A Simple 4-Week Plan
| Week | SDE-1 | SDE-2 / SDE-3 |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | 15 Amazon easy + medium questions; write 3 LP stories | 10 Amazon coding questions; learn caching, queues, sharding |
| Week 2 | 15 more: trees, graphs, DP; write 3 more stories | 3 case studies out loud (notification service, URL shortener, rate limiter) |
| Week 3 | Timed practice: 2 problems in 60 minutes | 5 of the 23 Amazon design questions; write your ownership and outage stories |
| Week 4 | 2–3 full mock interviews | 2–3 full mock interviews at your target level |
Want a plan built around your own dates and weak spots? Sign in and use the InterviewSkool prep planner.
Test Yourself at Your Level Before Amazon Does
The fastest way to find out which level you're at is a real practice interview. On InterviewSkool you can do a mock interview with Alex, our AI interviewer: coding mocks, and system design mocks at SDE-2, SDE-3 or Staff level, with a score out of 100 and feedback on exactly what kept you from the next level. Your first demo interview is free.
Pay figures are levels.fyi medians and change over time. Round counts are typical, not fixed; each team runs its loop a little differently. InterviewSkool is not affiliated with Amazon.