Amazon 16 Leadership Principles (Data Edition)
Every candidate interviewing at Amazon for Data Engineering, Data Architecture, or Analytics is evaluated against these 16 principles. Use this directory to prepare structured STAR stories.
Customer Obsession
"Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust."
What Bar Raisers Evaluate:
- Did you advocate for the customer even when it meant postponing an internal deadline?
- Did you dive deep into customer feedback or customer metrics rather than assuming what they wanted?
- Did your actions build long-term trust over short-term revenue gains?
Frequently Asked Questions:
- •"Tell me about a time you had to handle a difficult customer or stakeholder request and exceeded their expectations."
- •"Give me an example of when you refused to compromise on customer experience for short-term gain."
- •"Describe a time you deeply understood a customer pain point that was not obvious in telemetry data."
Ownership
"Leaders are owners. They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They never say "that’s not my job.""
What Bar Raisers Evaluate:
- Did you step up to fix an issue outside your official team boundaries?
- Did you make a decision that protected long-term architecture rather than applying a duct-tape patch?
- Did you take full accountability when something went wrong instead of blaming others?
Frequently Asked Questions:
- •"Tell me about a time you took on a critical task outside your job description because no one else was doing it."
- •"Describe a situation where you had to make a trade-off between a quick fix and a sustainable long-term solution."
- •"Tell me about a project that was failing and how you stepped in to turn it around."
Invent and Simplify
"Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by "not invented here.""
What Bar Raisers Evaluate:
- Did you turn a bloated 10-step process into a 1-click automated flow?
- Did you introduce a new architecture or open-source tool that replaced legacy bloat?
- Was your solution maintainable by the team after you moved on?
Frequently Asked Questions:
- •"Tell me about a time you simplified a complex system, architecture, or operational process."
- •"Give an example of an innovative idea you implemented that wasn’t part of the original roadmap."
- •"Describe a time you solved an entrenched problem with an unconventional approach."
Are Right, A Lot
"Leaders have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs."
What Bar Raisers Evaluate:
- Did you make the right call with 70% incomplete data without causing decision paralysis?
- Did you actively seek opposing data to test your own hypothesis?
- When proven wrong, did you quickly pivot and course-correct gracefully?
Frequently Asked Questions:
- •"Tell me about a time you made a high-stakes decision with incomplete information and how it turned out."
- •"Describe a situation where your intuition went against the consensus of the room and you proved to be right."
- •"Tell me about a time you realized you were on the wrong technical path and how you corrected course."
Learn and Be Curious
"Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them."
What Bar Raisers Evaluate:
- Did you master a new cloud platform, programming language, or domain from scratch under tight deadlines?
- Did you ask insightful questions to uncover deep technical bottlenecks?
Frequently Asked Questions:
- •"Tell me about a time you learned a completely new technology or domain on your own to unblock a critical project."
- •"Describe a time you challenged your own understanding of how a legacy system functioned."
Hire and Develop the Best
"Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent and willingly move them throughout the organization."
What Bar Raisers Evaluate:
- Did you coach an engineer to get promoted or overcome a career slump?
- Did you maintain high hiring standards despite hiring deadline pressures?
Frequently Asked Questions:
- •"Tell me about a mentee or junior engineer you coached and the measurable impact on their career."
- •"Describe a time you refused to compromise on candidate quality even when the team was understaffed."
Insist on the Highest Standards
"Leaders have relentlessly high standards—many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar."
What Bar Raisers Evaluate:
- Did you refuse to ship a buggy or insecure build when leadership wanted a rushed release?
- Did you introduce testing, linting, CI/CD, or architectural patterns that permanently eradicated a class of bugs?
Frequently Asked Questions:
- •"Tell me about a time you pushed back against shipping code or a product that didn’t meet your quality standard."
- •"Describe a situation where you raised the engineering or operational standard for your entire organization."
Think Big
"Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results."
What Bar Raisers Evaluate:
- Did you design a system for 10x-100x scale rather than just next month’s traffic?
- Did you propose an ambitious multi-year platform initiative that unlocked new revenue streams?
Frequently Asked Questions:
- •"Tell me about the most ambitious technical or business vision you proposed and executed."
- •"Describe a time you transformed a small localized project into an enterprise-wide platform."
Bias for Action
"Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk taking."
What Bar Raisers Evaluate:
- Did you distinguish between one-way door (irreversible) vs two-way door (reversible) decisions?
- Did you unblock a stalled project by taking immediate action rather than waiting for endless committee meetings?
Frequently Asked Questions:
- •"Tell me about a time you took a calculated risk to launch quickly instead of waiting for 100% certainty."
- •"Describe a situation where analysis paralysis was delaying your team and how you forced a breakthrough."
Frugality
"Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention. There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size, or fixed expense."
What Bar Raisers Evaluate:
- Did you slash AWS/cloud bills by optimizing compute, storage tiering, or query patterns?
- Did you achieve high velocity without demanding more engineers or inflated budgets?
Frequently Asked Questions:
- •"Tell me about a time you delivered significant business results with a constrained budget or minimal resources."
- •"Give an example of a cloud or infrastructure cost-optimization initiative you spearheaded."
Earn Trust
"Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing."
What Bar Raisers Evaluate:
- Did you transparently admit a mistake to leadership before someone else found it?
- Did you repair a damaged working relationship with an engineering team or client?
Frequently Asked Questions:
- •"Tell me about a time you made a significant mistake and how you handled communication with stakeholders."
- •"Describe a situation where you had to earn the trust of a skeptical team or senior stakeholder."
Dive Deep
"Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdotes differ. No task is beneath them."
What Bar Raisers Evaluate:
- Did you dig into raw server logs, memory dumps, or packet traces to find the real root cause?
- Did you refuse to accept surface-level explanations for an intermittent production failure?
Frequently Asked Questions:
- •"Tell me about the most complex technical bug or production incident you personally investigated and resolved."
- •"Describe a time you audited a metric or system behavior and discovered an underlying discrepancy."
Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit
"Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly."
What Bar Raisers Evaluate:
- Did you present data-driven arguments against a VP or Principal Engineer’s proposal?
- Once the final decision went against your recommendation, did you execute with 100% energy without grumbling?
Frequently Asked Questions:
- •"Tell me about a time you strongly disagreed with your manager or a senior leader’s technical decision."
- •"Describe a situation where you had to fully commit to an initiative you originally opposed."
Deliver Results
"Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle."
What Bar Raisers Evaluate:
- Did you overcome unforeseen technical hurdles and ship on time?
- Did you achieve quantifiable business KPIs (revenue, latency, uptime, adoption)?
Frequently Asked Questions:
- •"Give me an example of your most impactful project and the exact business metrics you moved."
- •"Tell me about a project that encountered severe roadblocks and how you ensured it still delivered on time."
Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer
"Leaders work every day to create a safer, more productive, higher performing, more diverse, and more just work environment."
What Bar Raisers Evaluate:
- Did you eradicate burnout, on-call fatigue, or bad team practices?
- Did you champion psychological safety, diversity, and fair opportunities?
Frequently Asked Questions:
- •"Tell me about a time you improved team health, on-call load, or reduced developer burnout."
- •"How do you create an inclusive environment where dissenting opinions are welcomed?"
Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility
"We started in a garage, but we’re big now. We are big, we impact the world, and we are far from perfect. We must be humble and thoughtful about even the secondary effects of our actions."
What Bar Raisers Evaluate:
- Did you think about data privacy, security, environmental efficiency, or ethical implications of your system?
- Did you build safeguards against downstream cascading failures?
Frequently Asked Questions:
- •"Tell me about a decision where you accounted for long-term downstream societal or security impacts."
- •"How have you built systems with global reliability, privacy, and compliance in mind?"