Type · discovery
A customer is migrating a legacy monolithic application to AWS. What are the first three technical questions you ask to determine if they should use EC2, ECS, or Lambda?
How to Pass the AWS Solutions Architect Interview in 2026
The AWS Solutions Architect interview runs 6 rounds: Recruiter Screen, Technical Discovery, Architecture Demo, Sales Pitch / Co-Sell, Behavioral / Leadership, and Bar Raiser. JobMentis holds 12 Solutions Architect questions for AWS, last updated November 10, 2026.
FAANG · Solutions Architect Interview Guide
Sign up to see ATSHeadquartered in United StatesInterview language: English
The AWS DNA (TL;DR)
The bar-raiser round at AWS heavily grades your alignment with Leadership Principles like 'Customer Obsession' and 'Bias for Action'. Interviewers look for a metric-with-denominator in your STAR stories, verifying you can quantify your past engineering trade-offs.
The AWS Interview Loop
Your onsite loop will typically consist of 6 rounds.
- 1
Round 1
Recruiter ScreenMotivation, technical depth, customer-facing experience, fit. - 2
Round 2
Technical DiscoveryDiagnosing customer technical context, integration requirements, scoping a fit. - 3
Round 3
Architecture DemoPresenting a reference architecture live, defending design choices, handling depth-of-knowledge probes. - 4
Round 4
Sales Pitch / Co-SellWorking with an AE on a mock customer call, anchoring value, navigating objections. - 5
Round 5
Behavioral / LeadershipPast evidence of ownership, influence, resolving conflict. - 6
Round 6
Bar RaiserAn interviewer from another team acts as an objective third party, assessing you for long-term success at Amazon and against the Leadership Principles, not just for the specific role. They hold the hiring bar and can veto.
The Danger Zone: Top Reasons Candidates Fail
Based on our database of AWS interview outcomes, avoid these common traps:
- Assuming the customer already has IAM best practices implemented
- Ignoring the customer's operational maturity and team skill set
- Neglecting to discuss TTL settings or cache invalidation strategies
- Ignoring potential network latency issues between VPCs
Test Yourself: AWS Interview Questions
Three questions from the AWS bank.
Type · pitch
The customer is worried about 'vendor lock-in' and is hesitant to move their workloads to AWS. How do you address this?
Type · behavioral
STARDescribe a situation where you had to learn a new AWS service under a tight deadline to solve a customer's immediate problem.
+ many more questions, signals, and worked examples
Sign up to unlock the full AWS grading rubric
AWS Interview Question Bank
A sample from our database, grouped by round. Sign up to see the full set.
9 of 12 questions shown
1
Recruiter Screen
1- 1
Type · motivation
Why do you want to transition from a generalist engineering role to a customer-facing Solutions Architect role at AWS?
2
Technical Discovery
3- 2
Type · discovery
A customer is migrating a legacy monolithic application to AWS. What are the first three technical questions you ask to determine if they should use EC2, ECS, or Lambda? - 3
Type · discovery
How do you assess a customer's current security posture before proposing a cloud-native data lake architecture? - + 1 more questions in this round (sign up to unlock)
3
Architecture Demo
3- 4
Type · design
CIRCLESDesign a highly available, global content delivery system for a media company using S3, CloudFront, and Route 53. - 5
Type · design
CIRCLESDefend your choice of using Amazon Aurora over a self-managed MySQL instance on EC2 for a customer with high-growth requirements. - + 1 more questions in this round (sign up to unlock)
4
Sales Pitch / Co-Sell
3- 6
Type · pitch
The customer is worried about 'vendor lock-in' and is hesitant to move their workloads to AWS. How do you address this? - 7
Type · pitch
You are on a call with a CTO who wants to move to the cloud but is constrained by a strict legacy budget. How do you position AWS cost optimization? - + 1 more questions in this round (sign up to unlock)
5
Behavioral / Leadership
2Unlock all 12 AWS questions, free
No credit card. Every question with its framework, the grading signals interviewers score against, and a worked answer for each.
Interview tracks at AWS
How AWS's DNA translates across functions. Pick your role.
AWS resume and cover letter
Applications to AWS go through an applicant tracking system, which parses your resume before a recruiter reads it. Keep the layout plain and describe your skills in the words of the posting. The interviews usually run in English, so send your resume and cover letter in English unless the posting asks for another language. Give each point in the AWS DNA above a bullet that proves it.
Check your resume against the AWS job posting
Upload your resume with the AWS job description to see your ATS score, the keywords you are missing and what to fix before you apply.
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Write your AWS cover letter
Drafted from your resume and the AWS posting, so it names what you actually did. You edit it before you send it.
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Practice AWS interviews end-to-end
AWS Mock Interview
Run a live mock interview with our AI interviewer using AWS-style prompts. Get scored on structure, signal, and answer length - exactly how the real loop grades you.
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STAR Stories for AWS Behavioral Rounds
Build a Story Bank of your past wins, mapped to the leadership signals AWS interviewers grade on. Reuse them across every behavioral round.
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AWS Interview Prep Hub
The frameworks behind every AWS round: CIRCLES for product sense, hypothesis-driven debugging for analytical, STAR for behavioral. Learn each one in 10 minutes.
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Interview Frameworks
CIRCLES, STAR, AARRR, RICE, MECE. The exact frameworks that make AWS interviewers nod instead of frown. Step-by-step playbooks with the moves and the pitfalls.
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Sample answers
What a strong answer to these AWS interview questions shows.
A customer is migrating a legacy monolithic application to AWS. What are the first three technical questions you ask to determine if they should use EC2, ECS, or Lambda?
A strong answer shows: Architectural breadth; Requirement gathering.
The customer is worried about 'vendor lock-in' and is hesitant to move their workloads to AWS. How do you address this?
A strong answer shows: Customer empathy; Communication skills.
Frequently asked questions
How many interview rounds does AWS run for Solutions Architect candidates?
6 rounds, in this order: Recruiter Screen, Technical Discovery, Architecture Demo, Sales Pitch / Co-Sell, Behavioral / Leadership, and Bar Raiser.
What does AWS look for in Solutions Architect candidates?
The bar-raiser round at AWS heavily grades your alignment with Leadership Principles like 'Customer Obsession' and 'Bias for Action'. Interviewers look for a metric-with-denominator in your STAR stories, verifying you can quantify your past engineering trade-offs.
In which language does AWS run its interviews?
AWS usually interviews in English.
How many AWS Solutions Architect interview questions does JobMentis hold?
12 questions across the rounds of the AWS loop, last updated November 10, 2026.
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