The work is operationally real. Our consumers are live systems, and ours matter most at exactly the moments something else is going wrong, so availability is a design constraint here rather than something handled after launch.
Key job responsibilities
Design, build, launch and operate production services end to end — you will write the design document, make the trade-offs, defend them in review, and own what you shipped
Build high-throughput distributed systems that operate under real latency and availability commitments, and the query and serving layers behind them
Build real-time detection and alerting that tells an operator what changed and why it matters, rather than requiring them to know what to look for first
Build rules and decision engines that replace large-scale manual workflows with software
Build optimization systems that return the best available answer within a fixed time budget, degrading to a simpler strategy rather than failing
Build and extend the APIs other services depend on, and the React web applications our operators and planners work in
Build agentic systems that investigate a problem, determine the cause, recommend a course of action and increasingly take it
Raise the operational bar on what you own: monitoring, alarming, recovery paths and the tests that span service boundaries
A day in the life
Your day is a mix of building and deciding. A typical week has you deep in implementation on a service you own, in a design review arguing about someone else's, and in a conversation with the people who depend on what you build.
Your closest collaborators are the engineers and scientists who build the forecasting and optimization models next to you — they need what your systems produce, and what they produce has to land in systems you operate. Beyond the immediate team you will work with capacity planners and operators who make decisions from the software you build, with partner service teams whose systems you integrate with and occasionally contribute code to directly, and with the leadership who review the operational numbers your systems generate.
You will be expected to take on ambiguous problems and work independently, making business and technical trade-offs to deliver results — with support from teammates who will answer questions and work through day-to-day problems with you. Where no established pattern exists, we evaluate options, choose one, and write down why.
You will be a fully participating team member in daily stand-ups, design review sessions, demos, code reviews and other team gatherings. This position involves on-call responsibilities, typically one week every two months. We build fault-tolerant systems to minimize being paged during off-hours, and when we are paged we root-cause and fix so the same page does not come back.
About the team
Our mission is that EC2 capacity is maximally available and maximally utilized, managed autonomously rather than by hand. Every system we build moves work from a person to software and then makes that software accountable for the outcome.
We set tenets and target outcomes before a design exists, then build against them and settle the trade-offs in review. Design, implementation, prototyping, security review and documentation rotate across the team, so no system has a single point of knowledge and engineers end a year with more range than they began it.
We are invested in your growth. We assign projects that balance what the business needs against what will make each engineer more capable of owning something larger next time. As an experienced engineer you will have opportunities to mentor while working alongside senior and principal engineers across the organization. As a team, we enjoy connecting socially while respecting the balance between work and personal life.
As an experienced engineer you will have opportunities to mentor while working alongside senior and principal engineers across the organization.
As a team, we enjoy connecting socially while respecting the balance between work and personal life.
3+ years of non-internship professional software development experience
2+ years of non-internship design or architecture (design patterns, reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems experience
1+ years of software development engineer or related occupational experience
1+ years of designing and developing large-scale, multi-tiered, multi-threaded, embedded or distributed software applications, tools, systems, and services using: C#, C++, Java, or Perl experience
1+ years of Object Oriented Design experience
Bachelor's degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field
Experience programming with at least one software programming language
3+ years of full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, and operations experience
Bachelor's degree in computer science or equivalent
Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status, disability, or other legally protected status.
Our inclusive culture empowers Amazonians to deliver the best results for our customers. If you have a disability and need a workplace accommodation or adjustment during the application and hiring process, including support for the interview or onboarding process, please visit https://amazon.jobs/content/en/how-we-hire/accommodations for more information. If the country/region you’re applying in isn’t listed, please contact your Recruiting Partner.
The base salary range for this position is listed below. Your Amazon package will include sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs). Final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience, qualifications, and location. Amazon also offers comprehensive benefits including health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans, EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line, Flexible Spending Accounts, Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage), 401(k) matching, paid time off, and parental leave. Learn more about our benefits at https://amazon.jobs/en/benefits.
USA, WA, Seattle - 143,700.00 - 194,400.00 USD annually
