Amgen Software Engineer interviews typically start with a recruiter or manager screen, then add manager, panel or onsite conversations. Candidates report behavioral depth, project walkthroughs, and team-specific technical topics.
$133K
Avg. Base Comp
$170K
Avg. Total Comp
2-4 rounds
Typical Rounds
3-5 weeks
Process Length
Amgen Software Engineer interviews vary a lot by team, so expect a conversation about your own work more than a standard algorithm drill. Candidates report a recruiter or manager screen, then one to three further conversations with a hiring manager, team members or a panel. Several describe repeated questions about past projects and motivation, so prepare a few projects you can defend in detail, including your tool choices and trade-offs.
The technical content depends on the team. One candidate reported a HackerRank problem on merging anagrams plus a short multiple-choice section, followed by a purely behavioral manager conversation. Another described a virtual evaluation with a coding problem, a discussion of optimal solutions and their trade-offs, a system design prompt to design a book borrowing application, and questions on cloud-native, LLM and AI/ML experience. Reports also mention MES (manufacturing execution system) lifecycle and scaling questions, and embedded topics such as interrupt handling, concurrency and UART, SPI, I²C and CAN.
Behavioral questions come up often. Candidates mention disagreeing with management, strengths and weaknesses, cross-team disagreements, why Amgen and why the role. Reported timelines run from about three weeks to just over a month, and one candidate waited nearly four months between applying and hearing back. Several candidates describe slow or missing follow-up after final rounds, so ask about next steps at each stage. Clarify early whether the role is frontend, full stack or tied to a specific domain, since one candidate reported the role definition shifting mid-process.
Synthesized from 15 candidate reports by our editorial team.
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Real interview reports from people who went through the Amgen process.
I'll start with the ending, since it's what most people want to know first: I accepted the offer for the Software Engineer role at Amgen. The process had three rounds, and each one tested a different side of how I work.
The first round was a one-hour virtual conversation with the hiring manager or director. It focused on scenario-based questions and touched on distributed systems and system design. I'd treat it as a discussion rather than a quiz, since the scenarios were open-ended and the interviewer was paying attention to how I reasoned through the problem.
After that I was invited to in-person interviews at the Hyderabad office. The second round was a 30-minute session with a manager, and it was the most unusual part for me. Instead of a standard question set, they presented a real problem their team was actively working on and asked how I would approach it. There's no prepared answer for that, so you have to think out loud and work through it in real time.
The final round was a one-hour deep technical dive. We covered my past projects, how agentic AI workflows are managed, and system scaling. It ended with a whiteboard design session, which was the most demanding part of the day for me because I had to sketch and defend a design while talking through it.
Prep tip from this candidate
Expect the manager round to hand you a live problem the team is working on, so practice reasoning out loud through unfamiliar problems instead of rehearsing canned answers. Also be ready to discuss agentic AI workflow management and system scaling in depth, since the final round combined those topics with a whiteboard design.
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Sourced from candidate reports and verified by our team.
Topics based on recent interview experiences.
Featured question at Amgen
What do you tell an interviewer when they ask you what your strengths and weaknesses are?
| Question | |
|---|---|
| 2nd Highest Salary | |
| Monthly Customer Report | |
| Weighted Keys | |
| Hurdles In Data Projects | |
| Cumulative Distribution | |
| Retailer Data Warehouse | |
| Total Spent on Products | |
| P-value to a Layman | |
| Detecting ECG Tachycardia Runs | |
| Size of Joins | |
| Last Transaction | |
| Brain Cancer Treatment Outcomes | |
| Always Excited Users | |
| Sum to Zero | |
| Valid Anagram | |
| Flatten JSON | |
| 85% vs 82% | |
| Cumulative Reset | |
| Rider Discount | |
| Digit Accumulator | |
| Multi-Reaction | |
| Time Difference | |
| Search Linked List | |
| Common Prefix | |
| Count Transactions | |
| Greatest Common Denominator | |
| Subscription Retention | |
| Concurrent LLM Serving | |
| Possible Triangles |
Synthesized from candidate reports. Individual experiences may vary.
Candidates report a first call with a recruiter, HR or the hiring manager covering background, motivation and basic fit. One candidate described a laid-back STAR-style screen with questions such as where they saw themselves in five years. Technical depth at this stage is typically light, though the format may vary by team.
Not every candidate reports this step. One described a HackerRank problem on merging anagrams plus about 10 multiple-choice questions on the job description. Another reported a virtual evaluation with a coding problem, optimal-solution trade-offs and a book borrowing system design prompt. Prepare for both coding and design, though your team may skip them.
Several candidates report a one-on-one with the hiring manager. Topics include previous projects, why Amgen, why this role and behavioral scenarios. One candidate reported a 30-minute fully behavioral conversation with no questions about their earlier coding solution. Expect to walk through past work and explain your decisions.
Candidates report panels with senior interviewers, a final on-site round, or multiple onsite technical rounds. Reported topics include resume deep dives, MES lifecycle and scaling scenarios, embedded systems such as interrupts, concurrency and UART, SPI, I²C and CAN, and cross-team collaboration. These vary widely by team, so ask the recruiter for focus areas and prepare to reason aloud.
Outcomes in these reports include rejections and no response after an onsite or technical round. Candidates describe waits of about a week after the final round, and some report slow or missing recruiter communication. Follow up proactively and confirm role details, such as scope, compensation and benefits, early.
