Application deadline: Oct 28, 2026
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is looking for a Systems Development Engineer to design, build, and operate Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) control-plane services in air-gapped regions. You will help governments run secure cloud infrastructure at scale.
In this role, you will join a team of engineers who build and operate software for EC2's control plane, fleet health, and capacity operations in air-gapped cloud environments. You will build features and services from design through production, write the tools and automation that keep them running, and help raise the quality of what the team ships. Commercial tooling often does not exist in isolated regions, so you will build what the team needs instead of configuring an off-the-shelf product.
This position requires that the candidate selected must currently possess and maintain an active TS/SCI security clearance with polygraph. The position further requires the candidate to opt into a commensurate clearance for each government agency for which they perform AWS work.
Key job responsibilities
- Design, build, and operate EC2 control-plane services, fleet health automation, and capacity tooling across air-gapped cloud environments.
- Own features end to end, with guidance from senior engineers: write the design, implement and test the code, deploy it through pipelines to disconnected regions, and operate it in production, including on-call.
- Improve monitoring, alarming, and deployment safety for the services you own, and drive the fix when an operational issue reveals a gap.
- Work with partner teams and stakeholders across the air-gapped partitions to deliver shared infrastructure.
- Take part in design and code reviews.
- Use generative artificial intelligence tools and techniques to improve automation, code quality, and team productivity.
A day in the life
You might start the morning finishing a design document for a new capacity automation feature, then review a teammate's code change to how instance lifecycle events are processed in a disconnected region. After lunch, you work with a partner team to get your change into a shared deployment pipeline, then spend the afternoon tracking down the root cause of an alarm from last night's on-call shift. You write code most days, and you are expected to propose better ways to automate capacity and remediation workflows in the systems you own.
About the team
We own the software that keeps EC2 running in the air-gapped partitions: control-plane services, fleet-health automation, and the capacity tooling our government customers depend on. We operate what we build, so the engineers who design a remediation workflow are the ones it pages. Because the commercial tooling for a problem frequently does not exist in an isolated region, you build the thing rather than configure it. The team defaults to written design documents and clear ownership boundaries, and you will work alongside engineers who are passionate about solving hard infrastructure problems in the most demanding regulated cloud environments.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
- Associate's degree or above, or CND (Certified Network Defender) or GSEC (GIAC Security Essentials)
- Experience programming with at least one modern language such as C++, C#, Java, Python, Golang, PowerShell, Ruby
- Experience tools for automation (building, testing, releasing or monitoring)
- Experience in networking, storage systems, operating systems and hands-on systems engineering
- Current, active US Government Security Clearance of TS/SCI with Polygraph
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, computer engineering, or related field
- Experience on highly concurrent, high throughput systems and knowledge of complex distributed systems
- Knowledge of and proficiency in the use of Python scripting language
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 - 99,100.00 - 160,000.00 USD annually
