Amazon’s culture is known for its love for data and customer obsession. No wonder Amazon’s Business Intelligence Engineer interviews are tough to crack! With a new leadership principle that aims to make Amazon the world’s best employer, more and more skilled candidates want a shot at the Business Intelligence role at Amazon. This article takes you through what to expect during a Business Intelligence Engineer interview.
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This article will focus on the interview process for the Business Intelligence and Engineering (BIE) role at Amazon.
We’ll discuss:
- Hiring criteria for Amazon's Business Intelligence Engineer ole
- Amazon Business Intelligence Engineer interview process and timeline.
- Hiring decision process for the Amazon Business Intelligence Engineer role
- Amazon Business Intelligence Engineer interview questions
- FAQs on Amazon Business Intelligence Engineer interview
Hiring Criteria for Amazon's Business Intelligence Engineer Role
Typically, the hiring criteria for an Amazon Business Intelligence Engineer will include:
• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, Econometrics, Engineering, or any closely related field/equivalent experience.
• Experience as an Engineer in the data or Business Intelligence space: 3+ years for BIE, 5+ years for BIE II, 8+ years for Sr. BIE role.
• Experience translating between data and business needs and working directly with business stakeholders.
• Experience with data visualization tools like Tableau, Quicksight, or other similar tools.
• Experience with SQL, expert and writing and tuning SQL queries.
• Experience with ETL tools, creating and managing data pipelines.
• Experience in relational and dimensional data modeling.
• Strong data presentation skills, verbal and written communication skills. Experience in effectively communicating with business leaders and technical teams.
Amazon Business Intelligence Engineer Interview Process and Timeline
The interview process for an Amazon Business Intelligence Engineer typically involves three stages: a recruiter interview, one or two phone interviews, and an onsite interview with multiple rounds, in that order.
1. Recruiter Interview
The initial recruiter interview for the Business Intelligence Engineer role at Amazon is a 30-minute phone call. This round is to basically check if you could be a good fit for Amazon. During this round, you can expect questions related to your background, experience, and relevant projects. You might also need to explain the reasons for your interest in that particular BIE role in that specific team. This interview round will also test your communication and other behavioral aspects.
Ensure that you’re well versed with your resume. Be ready with one-line descriptions of some past experiences you’ve come across and align them with Amazon’s leadership principles. You can quickly mention some of these wherever appropriate. At the end of the call, you may ask questions you have about the hiring process at Amazon.
2. Phone Screen
Your next interview could be either one or two phone interviews. Typically it is just one technical phone screen interview of about 45 minutes to test your SQL, Python, data analytics, and data visualization skills. These skills are an essential requirement for a BIE role, so make sure you are well prepared. You can expect about five or more technical questions.
Communicate well, show your ability to identify useful data, and derive valuable insights from it. Wherever appropriate, talk about the trends you see and give actionable suggestions while giving your opinion. If you can reasonably make a prediction, that could boost your chances of success.
Recommended Reading: Amazon Phone Interview Questions
3. Onsite Interview
Finally, you’ll have your Amazon Business Intelligence Engineer onsite interview. This interview process takes around 8 hours in one day, including a lunch break. This interview could include about five to six rounds, each for about 45 to 60 minutes. Expect in-depth questions as well, and be prepared to go into detail. Showcasing your role-relevant skills becomes crucial here, especially if you have mentioned them in your resume.
In your interview rounds with Business Intelligence Engineers and data scientists, the focus will be on data analytics and data science. Other rounds will focus more on behavioral questions and leadership principles.
Keep an eye on your inbox for the first email.
In your technical rounds, expect questions related to edge cases and qualifying requirements, SQL, and statistics. You would have to use a whiteboard to solve them. Knowing Amazon’s history might help since some questions are often related to past issues Amazon has gone through and handled. You can expect to hear about the results in a very short time, typically after one working day.
Recommended Reading: Amazon Onsite Interview Questions
Hiring Decision Process for the Amazon Business Intelligence Engineer Role
Amazon has a concept of bar raisers. A bar raiser is assigned to each interview to ensure each new hire is better than at least 50% of their workforce. Each interviewer except the bar raiser has equal weightage in the hiring decision. The bar raiser holds veto power to either accept or reject a candidate. You will not know the bar raiser for your interview, but you need to show what makes you better than 50% of their workforce.
After the onsite interview, the hiring committee discusses and analyzes how you align with Amazon’s values and leadership principles. Each member may be assigned two to three leadership principles to evaluate you on.
The discussion might raise concerns if your answers diverged from their leadership principles too much, which could lead to rejection via the bar-raiser veto. For example, in an answer, you may have shown focus on competition over customers. That answer shows your traits are orthogonal to customer obsession.
If you’re a good fit for Amazon but aren’t a good fit for that team, other hiring managers might interview you further to position you appropriately within the company. If you’re selected, you can also discuss your salary and job expectations after you receive the selection call from your onsite interview. You can expect the call in a day or so.
Amazon Business Intelligence Engineer Interview Questions
Here are some past Business Intelligence Engineer interview questions from Amazon BIE interviews:
Technical Questions
- When should you use ELT, and when should you use ETL?
- Talk about row-level and column-level security in Tableau.
- You launch a new product in a new region. How will you predict if it will grow or fail?
- Your product is not growing. How will you find the factors impacting it?
- The probability of a product coming from location A is 0.8, and the probability of the product coming from location B is 0.6. Calculate the probability the customers will receive the product from location A or location B.
Recommended Reading: Amazon Interview Questions
Behavioral Questions
- Talk about the most complex problem you’ve worked on in your career.
- Talk about when you created something you weren’t expected to or asked for by the customer/team.
- Tell me about an experience of you working on something beyond your scope.
- Tell me about a time when you invented or simplified a process, problem, or solution.
- Tell me about the last skill you learned. When, how, and why did you learn it?
Recommended Reading: Amazon Behavioral Interview Questions
FAQs on Amazon Business Intelligence Engineer Interview
Q. How to prepare for and crack Amazon Business Intelligence Engineer Interviews?
Here are some steps you can take to make sure you have a better shot at a BIE role at Amazon:
- Refine your SQL, python, statistical, and data analytics skills.
- Know your data visualization and ETL tools.
- Your projects should require more from you than just deriving meaningful insights from data. Try to work for projects that require you to identify, explain and predict trends. You can also show ownership and add value to your project, even if it isn’t a requirement.
- Automate and create solutions for your current company. In your interviews, this will show you fit right in with your fellow BIEs at Amazon.
- Learn soft skills that help you work seamlessly in cross-functional roles like BIE.
- Follow Amazon’s leadership principles and intermittently check if you’re proceeding in line with them, even when you’re not working for the company (yet).
You might also find our article on Amazon Business Intelligence Engineer Interview Prep helpful for your BIE interview preparation.
Q. Where to prepare for Amazon Business Intelligence Engineer Interview?
If you need help with your prep, consider joining Interview Kickstart’s Data Engineering Interview Masterclass — the first-of-its-kind, domain-specific tech interview prep program designed specifically for Data Engineers.
IK is the gold standard in tech interview prep. Our programs include a comprehensive curriculum, unmatched teaching methods, FAANG+ instructors, and career coaching to help you nail your next tech interview.
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