Amazon MGM Studios is seeking a Software Development Engineer III to lead technical development for our Studio in the Cloud (SITC) platform. SITC is transforming entertainment content creation by moving all major production and post-production workflows from traditional on-premises infrastructure to AWS cloud-based solutions. This initiative encompasses nine core workflows-Dailies, Editorial, VFX, Sound, Conform, Color, Mastering, QC/Delivery, and Remote Production-representing the complete content creation lifecycle from Original Camera Footage (OCF) ingestion through final delivery.
In this role, you will lead software development for critical SITC platform components, owning team-level architecture and providing technical direction for multi-engineer projects. You may own architecture for specific workflows (e.g., media transcoding and processing engine, real-time collaboration infrastructure, GPU-accelerated rendering system, or content delivery and QC automation), designing and implementing distributed systems that enable creative professionals to work globally using industry-standard tools integrated on AWS. Your work will solve complex technical problems including high-bandwidth media transfer, sub-second latency playback for 4:4:4 10-bit video, elastic GPU compute for rendering workloads, and multi-region disaster recovery for productions that cannot tolerate downtime.
As an SDE III, you will work both tactically and strategically, contributing to 1-2 year technical strategy while delivering hands-on technical implementations. You will lead multi-engineer projects, provide system-wide design guidance, and ensure your team's software is architected for scale, performance, and long-term maintainability. You will integrate with leading creative tool providers including Avid, Adobe, Colorfront, and Blackmagic, understanding their technical requirements and ensuring optimal performance in cloud environments. Your systems will support Amazon MGM Studios' production slate spanning 150+ titles annually across International Originals and Global Originals.
This role requires deep technical expertise in distributed systems, media processing pipelines, high-performance computing, and cloud infrastructure. You will architect solutions that handle terabyte-scale data (each production generates 10-50TB), maintain sub-second response times for interactive creative workflows, and provide elastic compute scaling for rendering workloads that must complete on production schedules. Success requires balancing technical excellence with pragmatic delivery-building scalable architectures while meeting production timelines and maintaining the creative quality that content creators demand.
Key job responsibilities
Lead software development for critical SITC platform components, owning team-level architecture and providing system-wide design guidance for workflows such as media ingestion pipelines, transcoding infrastructure, real-time collaboration systems, GPU rendering platforms, or delivery automation
Design and implement distributed systems spanning multiple features across the full software lifecycle including working backwards from customer needs, software design, implementation, testing, deployment, and maintenance. Lead multi-engineer projects requiring integration of parallel work from team members
Own team architecture decisions including service boundaries, API contracts, data models, storage patterns, compute strategies, and integration approaches. Bring perspective and context for current technology choices and guide future technology choices that enable SITC to scale from 70+ to 150+ concurrent productions
Solve complex technical problems with multiple risks and roadblocks including: high-bandwidth media transfer (sustained 100+ Mbps) across regions with varying network infrastructure, low-latency playback for interactive creative review, elastic GPU compute scaling for rendering workloads, multi-region disaster recovery that maintains high availability during AWS regional outages, and integration with vendor systems (Avid, Adobe, Blackmagic) that have specific infrastructure dependencies
Develop deep understanding of business impact and show good judgment when making technical trade-offs between short-term delivery needs and long-term architectural maintainability. Proactively simplify code and resolve team architecture deficiencies that bottleneck innovation
Write exemplary production code that demonstrates best practices in code organization, clarity, simplicity, error handling, testing, and documentation. Your coding practices serve as examples for the team. Deliver frequently and incrementally, balancing speed of delivery with foundational architecture for the future
Lead design reviews for your team and actively participate in design reviews for adjacent teams. Ensure everyone's voice is considered when making decisions and build consensus on the best path forward when confronted with differing points of view
Drive adoption of engineering best practices on your team including operational excellence standards, robust testing strategies, security best practices, code review processes, and retrospective/COE practices. Identify and execute on opportunities to improve team operations and reduce systemic issues
Actively coach and mentor multiple engineers on your team, helping them develop technical skills, design thinking, and engineering judgment. Participate in hiring loops, technical assessments, and promotion evaluations
Communicate technical designs and decisions effectively in writing for technical audiences, creating architecture documents, design proposals, and technical specifications that drive alignment across the team and with stakeholders
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
- 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
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- 5+ 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
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, CA, Culver City - 168,100.00 - 227,400.00 USD annually
