Instead of the usual product sense and analytical questions, Amazon interviewers will focus almost exclusively on behavioral questions. They want to see that your work style fits with their 16 leadership principles, especially the ones about taking responsibility and putting the customer first.
To help you get ready, we’ve put together this full guide to the Amazon product manager interview. It includes 83 questions that were asked by real Amazon PM candidates and an outline of the interview process.
Landing a job as a product manager at Amazon is no easy feat. With its relentless focus on innovation and customer obsession Amazon only hires the very best. As a PM candidate, you need to demonstrate strategic thinking technical competence, business acumen and leadership skills just to get your foot in the door.
Preparing for an Amazon PM interview can be daunting. Their questions are designed to thoroughly assess your abilities across a wide range of areas. Don’t panic! We’ve compiled the top 25 most common Amazon product manager interview questions along with sample answers to help you craft winning responses.
1. How would you approach developing a new product within Amazon’s existing ecosystem?
This open-ended question tests your understanding of Amazon’s business, how well you can innovate within their ecosystem, and your strategic thinking abilities The interviewer wants to see that you can balance introducing novel products while complementing Amazon’s current offerings
In your response, explain how you would conduct market research to identify gaps and opportunities. Discuss collaborating with teams across the company to ensure alignment with goals. Highlight designing with the customer in mind and utilizing an iterative development approach based on testing and feedback. Demonstrate both creative and analytical thinking.
2. Share an example of when you had to make a critical product decision based on data.
As a data-driven company, Amazon needs PMs who can leverage metrics to guide decisions. Share a specific example that highlights your analytical abilities and capacity to make tough calls backed by data.
Explain the context and what data you examined Discuss your methodology for analyzing the information to draw insights, Provide the decisive action you took based on those insights and the result for the product, Demonstrate your fluency in using data to inform product direction
3. How would you go about prioritizing features for a new Amazon product targeted at millennials?
Amazon expects PMs to understand customers deeply, especially core demographics like millennials. This question evaluates your ability to align product features with user needs and preferences.
In your answer, explain how you would research millennials’ needs through surveys, focus groups, and analyzing Amazon’s data. Discuss prioritizing must-have versus nice-to-have features based on impact on metrics like engagement and conversion. Share how you would work cross-functionally to build features matching what millennials care most about.
4. How would you resolve a disagreement between UX designers and engineers on a new feature?
Collaboration is crucial for Amazon PMs across teams with divergent viewpoints. Share how you would facilitate constructive discussion, identify root concerns, and guide compromise between UX and engineering.
Highlight strategies like clarifying business goals, testing prototypes, and consulting executives. Emphasize making data-driven decisions in the customer’s best interest. Demonstrate leadership, conflict resolution, and cross-functional partnership.
5. If resources were constrained, how would you decide what to cut from the product roadmap?
Resource limitation is a business reality. This questions assesses your ability to make tough prioritization trade-offs.
In your response, explain how you would categorize roadmap items based on metrics like customer value, development costs, and strategic alignment. Share how you’d involve both data and team input in deciding what stays versus what gets cut. Emphasize focusing resources on elements that most impact core customer needs and business goals.
6. How would you turn negative product feedback into something constructive?
Negative feedback presents opportunities for improvement. Share your methodology for unpacking criticisms to uncover user pain points.
Explain how you’d work cross-functionally to diagnose the root cause of issues. Discuss processes like surveying users or conducting A/B tests to validate hypotheses around problems. Share how you’d use insights gained to improve the product experience.
7. Imagine you are developing a new Alexa-enabled device. How would you determine what features to include?
This evaluates your ability to define a winning product strategy and roadmap. Share how you would analyze Alexa’s existing ecosystem and conduct market research to identify gaps and opportunities. Explain how you’d determine what capabilities would uniquely meet customer needs versus competing devices. Discuss working collaboratively across teams to build a compelling feature set within feasibility constraints.
8. If you discovered a defect after a product had launched, how would you respond?
Product recalls demand swift, decisive action coupled with transparency. Demonstrate your crisis management skills and understanding of Amazon’s customer commitment.
Share how you would immediately stop sales and issue recalls. Highlight strategies for smooth returns/exchanges and communicating openly with users. Explain quickly investigating the issue with QA and implementing processes to prevent reoccurrence. Emphasize restoring consumer trust.
9. How would you turn around an underperforming product line?
This tests your analytical abilities and problem-solving skills. Share how you would dig into data like sales trends and customer reviews to pinpoint issues. Explain how you’d develop hypotheses, validate through experiments, and identify root causes. Discuss working cross-functionally to devise solutions to address concerns. Share how you would measure success and continue optimizing based on results.
10. What methods do you use to keep your product roadmap priorities up-to-date?
In fast-changing markets, PMs must stay nimble. Share your approaches for continuously realigning your roadmap with market trends and new customer needs.
Discuss tactics like analyzing sales data, monitoring social media, gathering user feedback, and engaging support teams. Explain how you determine when to re-prioritize items based on new developments. Demonstrate your agility in recognizing the need for roadmap changes.
11. How would you develop a product strategy for an existing product you feel could be improved?
The interviewer wants to assess your ability to critically evaluate current offerings and propose enhancements. Explain how you would deeply analyze the product and its metrics like sales, reviews, and usage. Share how you’d identify weaknesses and opportunities through market analysis and customer research. Discuss your methodology for translating findings into a strategy for modifications that would resonate with users and move business goals forward.
12. How would you ensure a new product works globally across different locations?
Amazon operates worldwide so PMs must consider products globally. Share how you would research regional differences in needs, culture, regulations, tech infrastructure, and more during product design. Discuss partnering with local teams to tailor product delivery and marketing regionally. Explain your approaches to ensure coordinated launch and continuous optimizations across geographies.
13. Tell me about how you have leveraged A/B testing in your previous roles.
A/B testing is foundational at data-driven Amazon. Share examples that demonstrate when and how you have successfully employed testing to guide product decision-making.
For each case, explain the hypothesis you were validating, how you designed the test, what metrics you measured, and how you acted on the results. Emphasize how testing enabled you to deliver measurable product improvements.
14. How would you measure the success of a new product and share it across the organization?
This evaluates your analytical abilities and capacity to create compelling success reporting. Discuss KPIs like customer sat, retention, engagement, and revenue that align with goals. Share visualization strategies to make data insights consumable across teams. Explain how you would tell a story from the data to showcase the product’s impact.
15. Tell me about a time you had to juggle multiple product priorities simultaneously. How did you manage?
PMs must master multitasking. Share a specific example demonstrating your organization, focus, and time management abilities when faced with competing priorities.
Explain how you evaluated and prioritized what had to get done using criteria like importance and deadlines. Discuss working cross-functionally and leveraging tools to stay on top. Share the outcome of keeping projects moving amidst the chaos.
16. How would you optimize an existing product feature to increase user engagement?
The interviewer wants to understand your skill in drilling into details to continuously improve products. Explain how you would analyze usage metrics and feedback to identify issues decreasing engagement with the feature. Discuss your approach to diagnosing why via surveys, interviews, and analytics.
Share creative ideas for modifying the feature to better meet user needs and business goals. Emphasize testing changes incrementally to measure impact.
17. What is the most effective way to incorporate user feedback into the product design process?
Continuous customer feedback fuels Amazon’s user obsession. Discuss strategies for infusing insights throughout product development like holding feedback sessions with designers or including top user requests in roadmap prioritization.
Share tools and processes you’ve used to efficiently gather, analyze, and disseminate volumes of user input. Demonstrate your customer-centric mindset.
18. How would you go about estimating the resources needed to bring a new product to market?
Resource planning is imperative to product success. Share your approach to estimating needs like budget, staffing, and timeline during product scoping. Discuss working backwards from goals and collaborating cross-functionally to understand requirements. Explain building in buffers and being responsive to shifts. Demonstrate analytical thinking and attention to detail.
19. Tell me about a time when you had to balance speed to market with quality in order to meet a product deadline.
PMs must strategically
Interview Process and Timeline ↑
How and when do I get an interview with Amazon PM? Amazon works a little faster than the other FAANG companies, which is good news. The process takes four to six weeks on average and follows these steps:
- Job application
- HR Recruiter email or call
- Phone screening (1-2 interviews)
- Writing assessment
- Interview loop (~5 interviews)
- Hiring committee review
- You get an offer!
Note that the process at AWS follows similar steps.
If you want to be a product leader (VP, Director, or Group PM), read this to learn more about the process and how to get ready.
Lets take a look at each step in more detail.
1 Deep dive into the product/organization
You probably already know from the examples above that you can’t become a PM at Amazon if you don’t know about the company’s products and how it works. Youll therefore need to do some homework before your interviews.
Here are some resources to help you get started with this:
Amazon Product Manager Interview
How do you prepare for an Amazon pm interview?
While Amazon PM interviews can take many twists and turns, they focus heavily on behavioral questions. This is where you’ll want to spend the majority of your preparation time. 1. In layman terms, can you describe your day-to-day activities as a product manager?
What questions do Amazon product managers ask?
Some of those aspects can include marketing, pricing, competition, and more. In any case, your answers to strategy questions should showcase a structured approach and excessive creativity. The following are some of the typical Amazon product manager interview questions related to strategy.
How long does an Amazon product manager interview take?
An Amazon product manager Exponent spoke with mentioned, in their initial phone interview, they were asked to talk about a time they declined a customer request and a time they wowed a customer. You will receive the results of this interview within 24 hours via email. Note that some candidates may encounter two phone interviews at this stage.
How do I prepare for an Amazon product manager interview?
It’s best to read up and go through various Amazon product manager interview questions to prepare for your interview. Your skills, abilities, and capabilities play a huge role, but you need to articulate that effectively. On the side, you should consider developing new skills, getting certifications, and doing mock interviews.
