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?
FAANG · Solutions Architect Interview Guide
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How to Pass the AWS Solutions Architect Interview in 2026
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 5 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.
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: Real AWS Questions
Three real prompts pulled from our database.
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
Describe 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
Design a highly available, global content delivery system for a media company using S3, CloudFront, and Route 53. - 5
Type · design
Defend 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
2- 8
Type · behavioral
Tell me about a time you had to deliver a difficult technical recommendation that the customer initially resisted. - 9
Type · behavioral
Describe a situation where you had to learn a new AWS service under a tight deadline to solve a customer's immediate problem.
Unlock 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.
Compare AWS with similar employers
Same DNA, different bar. Browse the closest companies in our database and see how their loops differ.
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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
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