Sr Software Development Engineer, Amazon Q

Amazon Q is helping redefine how developers and cloud practitioners build operate troubleshoot and optimize on AWS. We are building an intelligent assistant that goes beyond answering questionscombining generative AI with deep AWS context retrieval tools and actions to help customers understand their environments and get work done faster.

Building this experience introduces a new class of engineering challenges. How do you ground an LLMs response in relevant up-to-date information from a customers AWS environment while maintaining strong security boundaries and low latency How do you orchestrate multi-step agentic workflows that can reason retrieve information invoke tools and take actions reliably and safely How do you evaluate AI systems where quality cannot be measured by traditional software testing alone These are the kinds of problems you will help solve.

We are looking for a Senior Software Development Engineer to help shape the next generation of Amazon Q. You will work at the intersection of generative AI agentic systems and large-scale distributed services to build highly visible customer-facing capabilities used across AWS.

As a Senior SDE you will provide technical leadership for complex and ambiguous initiatives. You will work closely with engineers product managers applied scientists UX partners and teams across AWS to define architecture make critical technical decisions and translate advances in foundation models retrieval reasoning and agents into secure reliable production experiences.

This role offers an opportunity to influence both what we build and how we build itdeveloping new architectures and engineering mechanisms for AI-powered systems while raising the technical bar across the team.

Key job responsibilities
As a Senior Software Development Engineer on the Amazon Q team you will:

Build: Design and deliver major Amazon Q capabilities and the highly available scalable secure and low-latency distributed systems that power them. Build systems that connect foundation models with customer context AWS knowledge retrieval systems APIs tools and actions.

Solve: Tackle ambiguous engineering problems unique to production generative AI including contextual grounding agent orchestration tool execution retrieval security boundaries latency reliability and mechanisms for evaluating AI quality and effectiveness.

Own: Lead projects end to endfrom requirements and architecture through implementation launch operations measurement and continuous improvementmaking thoughtful trade-offs across customer experience quality scalability availability security performance and cost.

Lead: Define technical direction for complex initiatives influence architecture across Amazon Q and partner teams and simplify systems as they evolve. Drive high engineering standards across design testing observability deployment and operational excellence.

Mentor: Raise the technical bar of the organization through design reviews code reviews technical discussions and hands-on development. Mentor engineers and help teams navigate complex architectural and implementation decisions.

Innovate: Work with applied scientists product leaders and engineering teams to bring advances in foundation models retrieval reasoning and agentic AI into production. Explore new architectures and mechanisms that improve the quality safety reliability latency and usefulness of AI-powered customer experiences.

A day in the life
Youll start the day with the signals from how Amazon Q performed yesterday satisfaction trends latency tails eval results and pick up the problem that matters most. Mornings might be a design review with applied scientists on retrieval or agent orchestration; afternoons writing the service code that ships it. Youll partner with PMs TPMs and AWS service teams onboarding their own capabilities into the assistant and youll own what you build in production. Expect to move between deep distributed-systems work prompt and evaluation iteration and A/B experiments that tell you whether your change actually helped a customer.

About the team
Were the team behind Amazon Q in the AWS Management Console engineers applied scientists and product managers working in one loop rather than in handoffs. Our mission is simple to say and hard to do: make the assistant genuinely useful to anyone operating on AWS. We ship fast measure honestly and say so when the data doesnt support the idea we liked. Because the field moves monthly we expect to rewrite our own assumptions often and wed rather learn from a real experiment than argue in a doc. We care about operational excellence and about each others time.

- 5 years of non-internship professional software development experience
- 5 years of programming with at least one software programming language experience
- 5 years of leading design or architecture (design patterns reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems experience
- Experience as a mentor tech lead or leading an engineering team

- 5 years of full software development life cycle including coding standards code reviews source control management build processes testing and operations experience
- Bachelors 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.

Los Angeles County applicants: Job duties for this position include: work safely and cooperatively with other employees supervisors and staff; adhere to standards of excellence despite stressful conditions; communicate effectively and respectfully with employees supervisors and staff to ensure exceptional customer service; and follow all federal state and local laws and Company policies. Criminal history may have a direct adverse and negative relationship with some of the material job duties of this position. These include the duties and responsibilities listed above as well as the abilities to adhere to company policies exercise sound judgment effectively manage stress and work safely and respectfully with others exhibit trustworthiness and professionalism and safeguard business operations and the Companys reputation. Pursuant to the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

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 for more information. If the country/region youre applying in isnt 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 CA East Palo Alto - 193300.00 - 261500.00 USD annually