Amazon's AI-assisted coding OA: what candidates report

Published 1 November 2026 · 3 min read

Many candidates taking Amazon's SDE online assessment (OA) now get a second kind of coding task: a small production-style app, a set of failing tests and an AI assistant. Amazon's public prep pages don't describe it yet, so everything here comes from candidate reports. We say how solid each point is.

What Amazon says officially

Amazon's OA prep page for students and graduates describes a coding assessment with two problems, a work-style survey and, in some countries, a work simulation. The SDE II page lists 90 minutes for two coding questions, plus short system design and work-style sections. When we checked on 1 November 2026, neither page mentioned an AI-assisted task.

Two official rules still matter: you may use public online resources but not sites that need a login, and Amazon says your browser usage is logged. It also asks you to avoid copying and pasting, because it expects the code to be your own.

The format candidates describe

• It comes after the algorithm questions. Candidates describe a classic DSA part first, then a separate repository task (r/leetcode).
• You pick a stack. Reports mention Spring Boot, Node or MERN, and Django or Flask (r/leetcode, r/leetcode).
• The task is to fix bugs or add features. Most reports describe several bugs in one app. Some describe implementing two small features instead.
• It's scored by tests. Candidates report results such as "4/6" or "6/6" test cases for this part.
• About an hour. One candidate said they had to fix six bugs in 60 minutes and only managed two.
• The AI is a helper, not a solver. One candidate said the instructions explicitly said not to ask the AI to solve the problem for you.

Reports come from SDE I candidates in the US and India and from SDE II candidates, so it doesn't look limited to one level. Whether every candidate gets it is unclear.

What the bugs look like

A commenter who said they had read about 18 reports from July to September summed the bugs up as "shallow": a missing validation, a missing save, a wrong status code or a wrong route (r/leetcode). The hard part is finding them in an unfamiliar framework under time pressure.

One candidate's tests all passed one at a time but failed when run together. That usually means shared state between tests, such as data left behind by an earlier test. Always run the full suite before you call a bug fixed.

Does a low score end it?

Nobody outside Amazon knows the exact weighting. The reports point both ways. One candidate with 11 of 15 algorithm tests and 6 of 6 repository tests in Django was told they cleared the OA. Others with a full algorithm score but 4 of 6 or fewer on the repository task asked whether they still had a chance, and we didn't see their outcomes posted. One commenter heard the task is still in beta. Treat that as rumour.

How to prepare

• Pick the stack you can debug without docs. Candidates who chose Spring Boot without using it day to day said they lost most of the hour to the framework.
• Practice on a small web app. Clone a starter project in your stack, break a route, a validation and a save, then find them from the failing tests.
• Trace one request end to end. Route, then controller or view, then service, then database. Most reported bugs sit on that path.
• Read the failing test first. It tells you the expected status code, response body and side effects.
• Use the AI to navigate. Ask it where a route is handled or what a function does. Check its answer against the code before you change anything.
• Budget your time. If one bug takes more than 15 minutes, move on and come back. Partial credit seems to count.

Later in the loop, some candidates also get a discussion round on how they use AI. See Amazon's GenAI fluency round.

The skills overlap with other AI-enabled rounds. See how to use the AI without hurting your score and which companies allow AI.

Sources

• Amazon: Online assessment prep for SDE roles (checked 1 November 2026)
• Amazon: Online Assessment Prep, SDE II (checked 1 November 2026)
• r/leetcode: Amazon SDE OA, anyone done the AI coding round recently? (April 2026, candidate reports)
• r/leetcode: Amazon OA 15/15 but 1/6 in AI debug (July 2026, candidate reports)
• r/leetcode: Stripe and Meta new AI interview experience (July 2026, includes Amazon OA reports)