Internship Experience: Amazon

Application Process

In May 2023, I attended Amazon's webinars that explained different roles at the company. After the webinars, they sent out an interest form for a 2-month summer internship. The first step in the selection process was an online assessment with DSA questions. This was followed by a workstyle assessment based on Amazon's 16 leadership principles. After these rounds, I had a technical interview. The email mentioned that the interview would focus only on DSA, so I concentrated on revising DSA concepts in preparation. I received an offer letter 10 days later.

Internship Work

My internship started on 13th May 2024 in Chennai, where I joined the Quality Mechanism Algorithms and Experiences team at Kindle. Our team designed algorithms to improve the quality of the books and reading experience on Kindle. I spent the first week learning about the tools and technologies used by our team. I was given my project in the second week.

My job was to build a pipeline to automate the parsing of the Yellow Jersey files (the format in which books published on Kindle are stored) to get the content data from the books. Based on this content data, the quality algorithms can be applied to only those books that need them, making the process more efficient.

I was assigned a mentor to guide me through the project. She was the person I would go to for any advice. I also had regular one-on-one meetings with my manager to discuss progress and get guidance and feedback. Throughout my internship, I was expected to demonstrate at least 4 leadership principles through my work. This would be the basis for the final evaluation at the end of my internship and the possibility of receiving a PPO.

Overall Experience

One of the best things during the internship was the flexibility. There were no set work timings. I could come into the office whenever I wanted as long as I got the work done. At the end of my internship, our team went out for lunch and bowling, which was a great way to wrap up the experience. Amazon also organized events for interns, where we got to interact with interns from other teams and participate in fun activities.

For anyone pursuing this internship, I recommend focusing on DSA fundamentals and also understanding Amazon's leadership principles as they play a significant role in evaluations.