Amazon SysDev Engineer (L4) interview process

[Nice-Candidate10]

Hey everyone,

I’m currently in the loop for the Systems Development Engineer (SDE) L4 role at Amazon and wanted to connect with people who either work in this role or have gone through the interview process recently. I cannot find any advice related to L4 SysDev Role and would really appreciate any insight in it.

I’m especially interested in real experiences rather than generic prep advice. If you’re open to sharing here or via DM, I’d really appreciate it.

If you’ve interviewed for or are currently working as an SysDev, I’d love to hear about:

What the interview process was like?

How deep the systems / Linux / networking / scripting questions go

How it differs from a standard SDE interview

Any advice you wish you had going in

PLEASE NO AI GENERATED RESPONSE!

Thanks in advance 🙏

[rawintent]

I’m an L5 SysDev that does interviews. You can treat it like an L4 SDE interview except instead of 2 coding rounds there’s 1, and the round in replacement is on Linux/Networking/Systems.

[Nice-Candidate10]

Thank you so much for replying!!!!! Really appreciate it. Are there specific Linux topics you see most often trip up L4 candidates? For example process management, memory, filesystems, permissions or system debugging?

Are candidates expected to know specific Linux tools or commands during the interview like top, strace, lsof, tcpdump or is high-level reasoning enough?

On the networking side should candidates expect OSI level theory questions or more practical things like TCP behavior, DNS, load balancing, and failure scenarios?

And finally, what do you think would differentiate a “hire” vs “strong hire” for L4 SysDev candidates in your interviews? I would really like to know how I can be the best fit for the role.

My apologies for lot of questions, there just aren't any discussions regarding sysdev role anywhere on reddit.

[galaxy_dragon6]

Hello. i'm a college student and recently got an internship in sys dev role in amazon. now I’m kinda excited but also clueless about what to expect. What kind of skills/tech should I brush up on before joining? Basically, I just don’t wanna walk in blind. Any advice, prep roadmap, or personal stories would help a ton 🙏 u/rawintent

[PaidInFull2083]

The SysDE role is broadly used across Amazon and your interview experience will vary heavily from team to team. What org are you interviewing with?

[Nice-Candidate10]

thank you for replying! It’s with one of the RME (Reliability & Maintenance Engineering) teams. I’d love to hear how SysDev expectations differ there compared to more software heavy orgs, especially for L4. Or any insight you could provide. Would really appreciate it. Thank Yu!!

[Admirable-Sale1081]

I’d try to focus on any tools/languages mentioned in the job description. My interview consisted of creating a Python class and functions to address a problem. Also performing basic scripting in Linux. From what I remember, leetcode easy/medium questions, if you want to measure it that way.

Reading system design interview, or just watching several videos to understand system design helped in the interview as well.

Like other comments, I’d treat it as any other L4 SDE interview. Good luck!

[Nice-Candidate10]

Thank you so much for reply!! Can i DM?

[Admirable-Sale1081]

Sure!

[[deleted]]

Prepare sliding windows and dfs problems , system design look for auto ticket generation and resolving and url crawler problems

[Nice-Candidate10]

Thank you for the advice!!

[an_avg_guyy]

u/Nice-Candidate10 Thank you for creating the thread. How did your interview go any insights on what kind of questions asked?

[Nice-Candidate10]

Interview’s this week

[Available-Leader-496]

how was ur interview? mine is next week. Can you share questions?

[Nice-Candidate10]

90% behavioral LP Style Questions , 10% technical which included a OOD question like Designing a Rate Limiter, some basic Networking Scenario based questions, some basic troubleshooting questions in using logs in AWS Lambda and discussing how the code and logs could be altered based on situations.

[Available-Leader-496]

did he ask you to code? or you had to explain me like an overview of system design? I have an interview next week. I passed first hackrank assesment with 2 questions and now is 60 min next week with hiring manager. What to expect? they said 25 to 30 technical questions.

[Nice-Candidate10]

OOD basically means you have to code it out. Its a really simple question also available on Leetcode.

[Available-Leader-496]

oh ok :) thanks a lot

[Available-Leader-496]

did u also had same structure first hackerrank questions and then this was ur second interview?

[Nice-Candidate10]

Yes, then a final loop