The Financial Analyst role at Amazon Advertising is a highly strategic, data-driven position positioned at the intersection of finance, technology, and digital marketing. Amazon Advertising is one of the fastest-growing and highest-margin business segments within Amazon, making this team critical to the company's overall profitability and long-term capital allocation. As a Financial Analyst, you will not simply manage budgets; you will act as a key business partner to product managers, software engineers, and sales leaders to drive growth, optimize ad products, and evaluate the financial viability of new advertising technologies.

In this role, your work directly impacts how millions of advertisers engage with Amazon users. You will analyze massive datasets to evaluate the performance of products like Sponsored Products, Amazon DSP, and video ads. The sheer scale of Amazon Advertising requires analysts to handle complex financial modeling, forecast revenue in highly dynamic auctions, and build robust data pipelines. Whether you are modeling the lifetime value of an advertising customer or evaluating the infrastructure costs of a new ad-serving feature, your recommendations will shape executive decision-making.

Operating in this environment requires a unique blend of core financial acumen, advanced analytical skills, and a strong bias for action. Amazon relies on a decentralized, fast-paced operational model where financial analysts are expected to challenge assumptions and defend their analysis with hard data. If you are energized by the prospect of using data to solve ambiguous business challenges at a global scale, this role offers an unparalleled platform for professional growth and business impact.

The questions you will face during the Amazon Advertising interview process are designed to test your analytical depth, technical capabilities, and alignment with the company's culture. The following questions are representative of actual interview experiences and are structured to help you identify patterns in how Amazon evaluates Financial Analyst candidates.

Behavioral & Leadership Principles

These questions assess how your past experiences align with Amazon's core values and how you navigate professional challenges.

• Why do you want to work at Amazon, and specifically within the Amazon Advertising business unit?
• Tell me about a time when you had to make a difficult decision with incomplete data. What was your process, and what was the outcome?

Preparing for an interview at Amazon requires a structured approach that balances technical mastery with behavioral storytelling. You cannot rely on technical skill alone; your ability to articulate how you work is just as important as your ability to build a financial model.

To succeed, you must align your preparation with the key evaluation criteria that Amazon hiring managers prioritize:

Leadership Principles Alignment – Every interviewer is assigned specific Amazon Leadership Principles (LPs) to evaluate. You must prepare multiple behavioral stories that demonstrate deep alignment with principles like Customer Obsession, Ownership, Bias for Action, and Are Right, A Lot.

Analytical & Technical Proficiency – You must demonstrate a strong command of Excel, SQL, and basic financial modeling. Interviewers will evaluate your ability to manipulate data, identify trends, and draw logical conclusions from complex datasets.

Structured Communication – Amazon has a unique writing and communication culture. You must structure your behavioral answers using the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result), ensuring your explanations are concise, quantified, and focused on your personal contributions.

Business Acumen & Case Solving – You will be evaluated on your ability to dissect business problems, structure financial trade-offs, and make data-driven recommendations. You should understand the mechanics of the digital advertising industry, including key metrics like CPC, ROAS, and impressions.

The interview process for a Financial Analyst at Amazon Advertising is rigorous, highly structured, and designed to thoroughly test both your technical capabilities and cultural fit. While the exact steps can vary slightly depending on your location and seniority level, the overall flow remains consistent across global offices. The process emphasizes data-driven decision-making and strict adherence to Amazon's hiring standards.

Initially, the process begins with an application review followed by an online assessment or a preliminary HR screening call. For many international offices, such as those in London or Madrid, you will be asked to complete automated assessments that include logic games, personality tests, and situational judgment scenarios. If you pass this stage, you will move to a conversational phone screen with a recruiter or hiring manager. This screen focuses on your resume, your motivation for joining Amazon Advertising, and basic behavioral questions to ensure you meet the baseline requirements for the role.

The final stage is the loop, which is a comprehensive series of interviews. This loop typically consists of five to six separate interviews conducted over one or two days. You will meet with a mix of peer financial analysts, business partners from product or engineering teams, and senior finance managers. Each interviewer is assigned specific Leadership Principles to evaluate, and you will face deep-dive behavioral questions alongside technical exercises or a short business case study.

The timeline above outlines the standard progression from your initial application to the final offer stage. Candidates should interpret this timeline as a guide to pacing their preparation, ensuring they allocate sufficient time to master both the technical skills required for the early assessments and the behavioral storytelling needed for the final loop.

To excel in the Amazon Advertising interview, you must understand the specific competencies you will be tested on and how to demonstrate mastery in each area.

Leadership Principles & Behavioral Storytelling

Behavioral questions are the core of the Amazon interview experience. Every interviewer you meet during your loop will spend a significant portion of the conversation asking behavioral questions tied directly to the Leadership Principles. Strong performance in this area requires you to deliver structured, highly detailed stories that highlight your personal impact.

Be ready to go over:

• Customer Obsession – How you prioritize internal or external customers when making financial decisions.
• Ownership – Times you took responsibility for a project or problem outside your immediate scope.
• Dive Deep – Your ability to analyze complex data at a granular level to find the root cause of an issue.
• Deliver Results – Demonstrating how your actions led to tangible, quantifiable improvements for the business.

Example scenarios:

• "Tell me about a time you identified a financial inaccuracy that others missed. How did you find it, and what did you do?"
• "Describe a situation where you had to push back against a business partner's proposal because the financial metrics did not support it."

Technical Mastery: Excel, SQL, and Probability

As a Financial Analyst, you will be expected to work with large, unorganized datasets. Amazon relies heavily on self-service data retrieval, meaning you must be comfortable querying your own data using SQL and analyzing it in Excel.

Be ready to go over:

• Advanced Excel – Mastery of functions such as INDEX/MATCH, XLOOKUP, nested IF statements, and pivot tables.
• SQL Queries – Writing queries involving aggregate functions (SUM, AVG, COUNT), GROUP BY clauses, and complex multi-table JOINs.
• Data Analysis & Probability – Understanding basic statistical concepts, variance, and trend analysis to evaluate business performance.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Optimization modeling, basic Python for data manipulation, and building automated dashboards in QuickSight.

Example scenarios:

• "Write a SQL query to identify the average monthly ad spend for advertisers who registered in 2025."
• "Walk me through how you would set up a sensitivity analysis in Excel to show the impact of variable ad pricing on total margins."

Financial Case Studies & Business Acumen

During the loop, you may be presented with a short case study or business scenario. This exercises your ability to think like a business owner, structure a financial framework, and communicate your recommendations clearly.

Be ready to go over:

• Revenue Modeling – Structuring a forecast for a new ad product or feature.
• Cost Allocation – Analyzing the fixed and variable costs associated with running ad campaigns and infrastructure.
• Trade-off Analysis – Evaluating competing business priorities and determining which initiative yields the highest ROI.

Example scenarios:

• "If Amazon Advertising wants to introduce a new ad format on Prime Video, what key financial metrics would you track to measure its success?"
• "A product team wants to reduce ad load on search results to improve user experience. How would you quantify the financial impact of this decision?"