Application deadline: Oct 11, 2026
Are you passionate about building tools that empower teams across all of Amazon Web Services? Join us as a Software Development Engineer II where you'll own and deliver features for internal platforms that enable AWS teams to deliver exceptional customer experiences at scale. Your work will directly impact how thousands of builders across AWS develop, deploy, and operate services that millions of customers depend on daily.
In this role, you'll design and implement solutions for difficult technical problems, working with a talented team of Software Development Engineers and System Development Engineers. You'll take feature requirements from concept through delivery, making design decisions and navigating trade-offs independently. Beyond your own contributions, you'll raise the bar for the team by providing meaningful code review feedback, mentoring newer engineers, and identifying opportunities to improve developer productivity and operational excellence. This is an opportunity for experienced engineers who want to own impactful work while deepening their expertise in distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and software engineering best practices.
This position requires that the candidate selected must currently possess and maintain an active TS/SCI security clearance. The position further requires that, after start, the selected candidate obtain and maintain an active TS/SCI security clearance with polygraph or commensurate clearance for each government agency for which they perform AWS work.
Key job responsibilities
- Design, implement, and deliver features end-to-end for internal AWS tools and services, owning work from technical design through deployment and ongoing operational support
- Solve difficult technical problems across the development stack, evaluating multiple implementation approaches and making sound trade-offs to arrive at solutions that balance customer needs with long-term maintainability
- Provide meaningful code review feedback to teammates, including more senior engineers, raising the bar on code quality, testing practices, and engineering standards across the team
- Identify and advocate for improvements to developer productivity, operational excellence, and team processes, driving changes that make the team more effective over time
- Mentor newer engineers through constructive code reviews, design discussions, and knowledge sharing, helping onboard new team members and accelerating their growth
- Collaborate cross-functionally throughout the software development lifecycle, contributing to design reviews, documentation, and stakeholder communication while resolving technical disagreements through constructive dialog
A day in the life
Your typical day involves owning and delivering features for internal tools that impact teams across AWS. You'll spend time designing solutions to technical challenges, writing code, and providing thoughtful code review feedback to teammates. You might lead a design discussion for a new capability, debug a complex issue reported by an internal customer, or identify an opportunity to improve an existing system's reliability or performance. You balance hands-on coding with the broader thinking needed to make sound technical trade-offs.
You'll join a collaborative team of Software Development Engineers and System Development Engineers who are passionate about building tools that make AWS teams more effective. Our team values knowledge sharing and mentorship, with a broad mix of experience levels and tenures. As an SDE II, you'll play an active role in onboarding new team members, sharing context about our systems, and helping less experienced engineers grow through pairing and constructive feedback.
We care about your career growth and provide opportunities to deepen your technical expertise through increasingly complex challenges. Our team supports an inclusive culture where different perspectives drive innovation, and we strive for flexibility that enables you to bring your best to both work and life. Together, we're creating the foundational tools that enable AWS to continue innovating for customers worldwide.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
- Bachelor's degree, or CSSLP (Certified Secure Software Lifecycle Professional)
- 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
- Experience programming with at least one software programming language
- Current, active US Government Security Clearance of Top Secret with SCI eligibility or above
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Bachelor's degree in computer science or equivalent
- 3+ years of full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, and operations experience
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, CO, Denver - 143,700.00 - 194,400.00 USD annually
