What Does Amazon Look for in Employees?

Amazon looks for four things in an employee: evidence of its 16 Leadership Principles, skill in the job's technical domain, results stated in numbers, and a working style that fits a fast pace. The Leadership Principles carry the most weight. Every interview, at every level and in every country, is scored against them.

This applies to warehouse roles, corporate roles, and engineering roles alike. What changes between them is the technical domain, not the principles.

The 16 Leadership Principles

Amazon publishes all 16. The two most recent additions are Strive to be Earth's Best Employer and Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility, so any list of 14 is out of date.

Interviewers do not test all 16 in one interview. Each interviewer is assigned two or three, and the whole loop covers most of the list. The six below appear most often for individual contributors.

Every story should end with a measurable result: a percentage, a time saved, a cost removed, a defect count. Amazon interviewers are trained to ask for the number if you do not give it.

What to write in primary and secondary technical domain skills

The Amazon application form asks for a primary and a secondary technical domain skill. Write the domain you have shipped the most work in as primary, and the next strongest as secondary. Use the wording from the job description where it matches your experience.

Keep each entry to a short phrase. The field is used to route your application to the right hiring team, so a vague entry such as "software" slows the match.

Amazon employee superpowers: examples

Amazon's internal feedback process asks colleagues to name a person's superpowers, meaning the strengths other people can see in their work. The word now appears in some application and review forms, and candidates are sometimes asked the same question in interviews.

A good superpower is specific and tied to a principle. Five examples:

• Finding the root cause. You read the failing request and the logs before proposing a fix. This is Dive Deep.
• Simplifying a design. You remove a service or a step and the system gets easier to run. This is Invent and Simplify.
• Unblocking other teams. You answer the question that stalls another team's release. This is Ownership.
• Writing a clear document. Amazon decides through six-page written narratives, so this skill is visible every week.
• Estimating well. Your dates hold because you plan for the failure cases. This is Deliver Results.

Pair each superpower with one growth area. The Amazon format expects both, and naming only strengths reads as unaware.

What aspects of Amazon's culture or business attract you to work here?

This question appears on some application forms and in most first interviews. Answer with one specific part of the business, one principle you already work by, and one thing you want to learn there.

A sample: I want to work on the fulfillment systems because I have spent three years on inventory software and Amazon runs the largest version of that problem. I already work the way Ownership describes, which I can show from a project where I took over a failing integration. I want to learn how Amazon makes decisions through written narratives instead of slide decks.

Avoid answers built on the brand or the benefits. Interviewers hear those daily and score them as generic. For more sample answers, read why Amazon is the best answer.

Results, data, and pace

Amazon is a data-first company. Decisions are argued in writing with numbers, and a meeting often opens with silent reading of a document. Employees who can turn an opinion into a measured claim do well.

The pace is high. Teams are small, ownership is wide, and deadlines are firm. Amazon calls this a Day 1 culture, meaning teams are expected to act like a startup on its first day. Candidates should have an example of working well when the plan changed.

The bar raiser, an interviewer from outside the hiring team, decides whether you would raise the average of the team. Read what an Amazon bar raiser is to understand that role.