Senior Software Engineer; Former Amazon SDE

Senior Software Engineer

We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join a high-impact engineering team supporting a mission-critical, real-time analytics platform within a large enterprise environment.

This role requires a former Amazon engineer who can quickly ramp up and contribute to a complex engineering ecosystem. The ideal candidate will have experience working as an internal Amazon employee, preferably at the SDE 2 level or above, with strong expertise in backend software engineering, distributed systems, and large-scale production environments.

The engineer will partner closely with senior engineering leadership to enhance and maintain a mature legacy system with a significant operational footprint while also contributing to the design and implementation of a new streaming architecture.

This is an excellent opportunity for a senior engineer who enjoys:

• Working at scale
• Improving complex legacy systems
• Building reliable backend services
• Solving challenging distributed systems problems
• Working in environments where stability, performance, and operational excellence are critical

Note:

Prior internal experience working at Amazon is mandatory for this role to ensure rapid ramp-up and familiarity with Amazon’s internal tooling, engineering practices, and operational expectations.

Key Responsibilities

• Partner directly with senior engineering leadership to support and enhance a large-scale, real-time log and analytics platform.
• Analyze, improve, and maintain a mature 20+ year legacy codebase with limited documentation and high complexity.
• Identify technical risks, modernize patterns where appropriate, and improve system reliability and maintainability.
• Contribute to the architecture, design, and implementation of a new streaming pipeline and stream-processing capabilities.
• Build and enhance event-driven backend services designed for high throughput and low latency with strict SLAs.
• Make high-quality engineering decisions while considering downstream dependencies and system sensitivity.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure operational readiness and stable production deployments.
• Maintain a strong focus on code quality, testing, performance optimization, and operational excellence.

Required Qualifications

• Previous internal Amazon experience is required.
• Former Amazon SDE 2 or above candidates only.
• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience (or equivalent depth of senior-level engineering ownership).
• Strong experience in backend software engineering (not front-end focused).
• Must have experience as a Software Engineer, not a Data Engineer.
• Strong background in high-scale distributed systems and/or real-time data processing.
• Experience working with complex legacy codebases and delivering safe, high-quality improvements.
• Experience designing and building actor-based and/or event-driven architectures.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals, including:
• Code quality
• Testing practices
• Performance optimization
• Production reliability
• Operational excellence

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building systems requiring:
• High throughput
• Low latency
• Strict SLAs
• Familiarity with AWS CDK or similar infrastructure-as-code tools.
• Ability and willingness to ramp up on legacy frameworks and technologies.
• Experience supporting or integrating with A/B testing frameworks or experimentation platforms.
• Comfortable working in high-sensitivity environments where production changes have significant customer impact.

What Success Looks Like

The successful candidate will:

• Quickly ramp up and become a trusted contributor within a complex legacy environment.
• Deliver stable improvements while minimizing regression risk in a high-traffic production system.
• Contribute effectively to the development of new streaming capabilities while maintaining existing production workflows.
• Demonstrate strong ownership, curiosity, technical depth, and attention to detail.
• Collaborate effectively with senior engineers and cross-functional teams.

Candidate Requirements Summary

Must Have:
Former Amazon employee SDE 2 level or higher Backend Software Engineer (not Data Engineer / not Frontend) 7+ years software engineering experience Distributed systems / real-time processing experience Event-driven architecture experience Able to work hybrid 2 days/week at an Amazon Hub Must work on W2 without sponsorship

Rate: $80/hr W2 Interview/Submission Priority:
Only qualified, pre-screened former Amazon engineers should be submitted.