American Express interview process (2026)

Round-by-round breakdown of the American Express software engineering interview across 3 levels and 13 rounds: interview mode, sample questions, and worked solutions.

American Express salary & ratings · All interview processes

Software Development Engineer (SDE) Intern / Software Engineer Intern (typically a 6-month / ~24-week internship, freque

Difficulty: Easy · Timeline: 1–2 days · Recommended prep: 4–8 weeks · Cooldown: ~6–12 months

  1. Round 0: Online Assessment (coding)

    Assessment · ~90 minutes · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment · HackerRank

    Sample question: Linked List Cycle — Given the head of a singly linked list, determine whether the list contains a cycle (some node's next pointer points back to an earlier node). Return true if a cycle exists, otherwise false. Aim for O(1) extra space.

  2. Round 1: Technical Interview 1

    Onsite · 45–60 minutes · difficulty 2/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Two Sum — Given an array of integers nums and an integer target, return the indices of the two numbers that add up to target. Exactly one valid answer exists and you may not use the same element twice. Solve in O(n) with a hash map.

  3. Round 2: Technical + HR / Managerial Round

    Behavioral · ~50–60 minutes · difficulty 2/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

  4. Round 3: Offer

    Offer · 1–2 days

    Mode of interview: Offer discussion

Engineer / Software Development Engineer (entry-level; campus + off-campus)

Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: ~4-6 weeks · Recommended prep: 4-8 weeks · Cooldown: ~6 months

  1. Round 0: Online Assessment (coding; +aptitude on some campus drives)

    Assessment · ~90 minutes · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment · HackerRank

    Sample question: Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters — Given a string s, return the length of the longest substring that contains no repeating characters.

  2. Round 1: Technical Interview 1 (DSA + CS fundamentals)

    Onsite · ~45-60 minutes · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Linked List Cycle — Given the head of a singly linked list, determine whether the list contains a cycle. Solve in O(1) extra space using Floyd's fast/slow pointers.

  3. Round 2: Technical Interview 2 (projects + DB/system basics)

    Onsite · ~45-90 minutes · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Kth Largest Element in an Array — Given an integer array nums and an integer k, return the kth largest element (kth in sorted order, not the kth distinct). Discuss brute-force sort then optimize with a min-heap of size k.

  4. Round 3: HR / Managerial Round

    Behavioral · ~20-40 minutes · difficulty 1/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

Senior Engineer / Engineer II (SDE II; experienced / lateral)

Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: ~4-6 weeks · Recommended prep: 6-10 weeks · Cooldown: No published cooldown (unverified).

  1. Round 0: Recruiter Screen

    Phone · ~20-30 minutes · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

  2. Round 1: Online Assessment / HireVue

    Assessment · ~60-90 minutes · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment

    Sample question: Fruit Into Baskets — You are given an integer array fruits where fruits[i] is the type of the i-th tree in a row. You have two baskets, each holding a single fruit type in unlimited quantity, and must pick from a contiguous subarray. Return the maximum number of fruits you can collect (i.e. the longest subarray containing at most 2 distinct values).

  3. Round 2: Technical Round (coding + backend fundamentals)

    Onsite · ~1 hr · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Combination Sum — Given an array of distinct positive integers candidates and a target, return all unique combinations of candidates that sum to target. The same number may be chosen an unlimited number of times. Print the count followed by each combination.

  4. Round 3: System Design + Project Deep-Dive

    System_design · ~45-60 minutes · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Live system design interview

    Sample question: Design a Payment Gateway / Payment Processing System — Design American Express's payment gateway. Walk through the request flow from client to gateway to card network / third-party PSP and back (including UPI-style redirects back to the app). Handle retries and transient failures, guarantee exactly-once processing with client-supplied idempotency keys and replay handling, and cover distributed data storage, message queues, reconciliation, and failover. Justify each design choice over its alternatives.

  5. Round 4: Hiring Manager Round

    Behavioral · ~30-45 minutes · difficulty 2/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

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Worked sample solutions (code, design diagrams, and STAR answers) for every round are available in the FAANGPlus app: open interview processes.