Coding questions
American Express Online Assessment
Overview
Here is how public prep guides and student write-ups describe the American Express online assessment. This is not an official company brochure.
Card/payments domain; coding + behavioral Leadership behaviors.
Usual selection rounds
Rounds students usually mention: Online assessment → Technical interviews → HR
| Item | From student reports |
|---|---|
| Platform | Online assessment |
| Online test summary | Campus tech hiring often uses coding + aptitude mix; confirm your Amex college placement email. Public India fresher transcripts exist unevenly across years. |
| Eligibility notes | Drive-specific |
| Branches (reported) | Tech/analytics |
Online test sections
Section-level detail not verified in our source set yet - use the placement email / official PDF.
Extra notes from sources
- Check your college placement email for the platform, section order, and timing.
Sample practice question styles
These are practice questions for speed - not claimed to be from a real American Express live paper.
Coding Q1: Merge overlapping intervals
Problem: Given a list of intervals [start, end], merge all overlapping intervals and return the non-overlapping set that covers the same ranges.
Approach: Sort by start time. Walk once, merging into the last interval in the result when the next start is ≤ current end; otherwise append a new interval.
Complexity: O(n log n) time from the sort
American Express tip: Restate the problem, sketch a brute-force idea, then tighten it. Call out edge cases (empty input, single element, overflow) before you write code.
Coding Q2: Top K frequent elements
Problem: Given an integer array and an integer k, return the k most frequent elements. Order among equals can be arbitrary unless the problem says otherwise.
Approach: Count frequencies with a hash map, then use a heap of size k (or bucket sort by frequency) to extract the top k keys.
Complexity: O(n log k) with a heap
American Express tip: Restate the problem, sketch a brute-force idea, then tighten it. Call out edge cases (empty input, single element, overflow) before you write code.
Coding Q3: Linked list cycle
Problem: Given the head of a linked list, return true if there is a cycle and false otherwise.
Approach: Floyd’s tortoise and hare: move one pointer one step and another two steps. If they meet, a cycle exists. If the fast pointer hits null, there is no cycle.
Complexity: O(n) time, O(1) space
American Express tip: Restate the problem, sketch a brute-force idea, then tighten it. Call out edge cases (empty input, single element, overflow) before you write code.
Coding Q4: Binary tree level order
Problem: Given the root of a binary tree, return the level-order traversal (breadth-first) as a list of levels.
Approach: Use a queue. For each level, drain the current queue size, collect values, and enqueue children for the next level.
Complexity: O(n) time, O(n) space
American Express tip: Restate the problem, sketch a brute-force idea, then tighten it. Call out edge cases (empty input, single element, overflow) before you write code.
Prep tips from those student reports
- DSA + SQL
- Behavioral stories
Sources
- American Express careers (other)
These notes come from public reports and can differ by campus, year, and role. If your college placement email or the official careers/notification PDF says something different, follow that.
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