Architect the AI bidding platform that powers billions of daily ad decisions for millions of advertisers-from a first-time small business owner launching their debut campaign to enterprise brands managing hundreds of millions in spend. You'll own the technical strategy end-to-end: real-time inference at sub-millisecond latency, GenAI agents that learn and optimize autonomously, and experimentation infrastructure that proves it all works at scale.
Amazon Sponsored Products and Brands is seeking a Senior Software Development Engineer to join our Advertiser Controls team. You will set the architectural direction, make high-judgment technical decisions independently, and raise the engineering bar across the organization.
What You'll Own
- Real-Time Proxy Bidding Engine (Tier 1) - Define and lead the engine that computes per-request bids at sub-millisecond latency, build the ML inference infrastructure serving model outputs at bid-request time, and establish patterns that scale to billions of daily decisions
- GenAI & Agentic Intelligence Layer - Architect AI systems using LLMs, reinforcement learning, and preference optimization that learn from bidding outcomes and advertiser feedback; design agent-to-agent protocols, session lifecycle management, and model fine-tuning pipelines
- Experimentation Infrastructure - Design systems supporting multiple concurrent online experiments, enabling the team to test bidding strategies and AI optimization approaches with speed and statistical rigor
How You'll Lead
- Identify what needs to be built before it becomes obvious and frame technical strategy for ambiguous challenges
- Drive alignment across engineering, product, and science teams
- Mentor and develop engineers; represent the team in cross-org design reviews and principal engineering forums
- Make independent architectural decisions on hard problems-escalating only when broader organizational alignment is required
Why You'll Love It
- Your decisions directly shape how hundreds of millions of customers discover products on Amazon
- You'll define the GenAI architecture standard for the broader Sponsored Products organization
- You'll work at the intersection of real-time systems, ML infrastructure, and agentic AI-at a scale few teams in the industry can offer
Key job responsibilities
- Own the architecture and multi-year technical roadmap for the full AI bidding platform-spanning the Tier 1 real-time proxy bidding engine, GenAI intelligence layer, and experimentation framework
- Design and lead the real-time proxy bidding engine that computes per-request bids on behalf of advertisers at sub-millisecond latency, scaling to billions of daily decisions
- Build and optimize ML inference infrastructure that serves model outputs at bid-request time, including latency budget allocation, graceful degradation, and fallback strategies
- Design and build scalable, low-latency agentic systems that process millions of advertiser signals to deliver AI-powered bidding optimization and intelligent campaign guidance
- Establish engineering standards, design patterns, and evaluation frameworks that govern how AI systems are built, tested, and validated across the Advertiser Controls organization
- Drive architectural decisions that span multiple engineering teams, resolve cross-system dependencies, and unblock delivery at the organizational level
- Frame ambiguous, high-stakes technical problems into clear engineering strategies with well-defined milestones and success criteria
- Proactively identify and eliminate systemic operational risks, technical debt, and architectural gaps-delivering permanent, scalable solutions rather than tactical fixes
- Mentor and develop engineers across the team; conduct design reviews that elevate technical quality and raise the bar for system thinking
- Represent the team in cross-organizational design reviews and principal engineering forums, influencing technical direction beyond your immediate scope
- Partner with product managers, applied scientists, and principal engineers to translate advertiser needs and business strategy into executable technical plans
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
- Experience with distributed systems at scale
- Experience with Generative AI technologies including large language models (LLMs), model fine-tuning, RLHF, RAG, and agentic architectures
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- 5+ years of full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, and operations experience
- Master's degree in computer science or equivalent
- Experience in an online advertising role and have familiarity with advertising products and ad serving technologies
- Experience developing, deploying and managing AI products at scale
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, NY, New York - 184,900.00 - 250,200.00 USD annually
USA, WA, SEATTLE - 168,100.00 - 227,400.00 USD annually
