Company Prep
Amazon OA Questions 2026: Pattern, Meaning & Prep
What is Amazon OA? Pattern, sample questions, difficulty, and a practice plan for the Amazon SDE intern and SDE-1 online assessment.
The Amazon Online Assessment (OA) is the first real filter in Amazon's SDE hiring. Here's what it means, what it contains, and how to practice for it.
What is Amazon OA (online assessment)?
The Amazon OA is a timed, proctored coding assessment that Amazon sends to shortlisted candidates — usually within days of application. It is the first technical filter before interviews.
For SDE intern and SDE-1 roles in India, the OA typically has two or three parts: a DSA coding section with 2–3 problems, and a work-style assessment of multiple-choice behavioral questions.
The OA is designed to be passable without cheating: Amazon re-uses well-known patterns with varied constraints, and the bar is solving 2 out of 2–3 problems correctly with efficient time complexity.
Amazon OA pattern and difficulty
Coding section: 2 problems, usually 60–70 minutes. Problem 1 is typically medium — arrays, hashing, or two pointers. Problem 2 is medium-to-hard — often DP, graphs (BFS/DFS), or a greedy with tricky constraints.
Language: Python, Java, C++, or any language Amazon's platform supports. Python is common because it is fast to write under the timer.
Work-style assessment: 20–30 minutes of behavioral MCQs about workplace situations. There are no right or wrong answers — answer consistently with how you actually behave in teams.
Negative marking: none in Amazon's OA. Wrong submissions still cost time, so reading constraints carefully matters more than submitting quickly.
What does Amazon OA test?
The OA tests three things: correctness of the final code, time and space complexity, and edge-case handling — especially large inputs where an O(n²) solution times out.
Amazon shares a benchmark with interviews: candidates who optimize and explain complexity in the OA tend to clear the subsequent phone screen faster.
It is not a trick test — the problems are from standard patterns. The difficulty is combining the right pattern quickly under a timer, which is why timed mock practice beats open-ended LeetCode grinding.
Sample-style Amazon OA problems
Find the maximum number of tasks that can be completed within a time limit given task durations — greedy sorting problem.
Count the number of connected components in a grid after removing cells — BFS/DFS with a visited set.
Maximum sum subarray with at most K distinct elements — sliding window with a hash map.
These represent the pattern style, not actual reused questions. Solve the Amazon OA guide at /prepare/amazon-oa-questions and company PYQs at /pyqs for realistic practice.
How to practice for the Amazon OA
Week 1–2: revise medium-level arrays, hashing, two pointers, and BFS/DFS. Solve 3 problems daily from the Amazon OA prep guide.
Week 3: timed full mocks — 2 problems in 70 minutes, one monitor, no pause. Check if your first attempt is optimal or just correct.
Week 4: interview practice. Amazon interviews are LP-based too — rehearse 'Customer Obsession' and 'Deliver Results' stories aloud at /mock-interview/amazon.
Always test edge cases: empty arrays, single elements, huge N, negative numbers. Half the candidates who fail do so on constraints, not concepts.
How Apply helps for the Amazon OA
Use /prepare/amazon-oa-questions for the OA pattern, /prepare/amazon-sde-internship-india for the internship roadmap, and /mock-interview/amazon to rehearse LP-based technical rounds.
Practice previous year coding questions from /pyqs and tailor your SDE resume at /dashboard/generate before applying.
Continue this workflow
Put the guide into practice with the most relevant tools and supporting resources.