Senior Software Development Engineer, Leo Optical Inter-Satellite Link

Description

Amazon LEO is an initiative to increase global broadband access through a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO). Its mission is to bring fast, affordable broadband to unserved and underserved communities around the world. Amazon LEO will help close the digital divide by delivering reliable, high-speed connectivity to a wide range of customers, including consumers, businesses, government agencies, and other organizations operating in places without dependable internet access.

Innovation is part of our DNA! Our goal is to be Earth's most customer-centric company, and we are just getting started. We need people who want to join this ambitious program that continues to push the state of the art in distributed systems and software design. Come work at Amazon!

Export Control Requirement:
Due to applicable export control laws and regulations, candidates must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (i.e., current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum.

Design, implement, and enhance the switch-management software — from translating routes received from a centralized SDN controller into forwarding-table entries, to building MAC-learning and loop-prevention logic for a redundant switch topology — that enables deterministic, low-latency packet forwarding across the constellation

Design and optimize the networking layers of flight software for optical inter-satellite link systems, spanning network device drivers and protocol implementations on embedded Linux

Collaborate with cross-functional teams — including hardware, optics, systems, communications, and operations engineers — to integrate, test, and deploy high-speed optical communication systems and the networking stack that underpins space-based connectivity

Build and extend operational tooling for network diagnostics and observability — including routing-table inspection, packet capture and analysis, structured logging, and metrics emission — that enables rapid fault isolation and performance trending across the satellite mesh

As a Software Engineer on the Optical Inter-Satellite Link team, you won't just write code — you'll see it fly. Your software will control and monitor high-speed laser communications between satellites moving at orbital velocities, and you'll be there for every stage of the journey: from early design and ground-based verification to watching your code commission an optical link for the first time in orbit.

On the networking side, you'll design and debug the switching fabric that routes traffic across the constellation — ensuring packets traverse inter-satellite links with minimal latency and maximum reliability.

You will join a multi-disciplinary team of exceptional engineers whose work spans an unusually broad scope: embedded flight software running on satellites in orbit, cloud-based systems powering mission and network operations, automation frameworks that keep a growing constellation healthy, and AI-driven capabilities that make our optical links smarter with every orbit. We collaborate closely with optical, electrical, firmware, opto-mechanical, and operations teams — and with partner organizations including Mission Operations and Optical Network Operations — to deliver one of the most advanced optical communication systems ever built.

• 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
• 5+ years of full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, and operations experience
• Experience as a mentor, tech lead or leading an engineering team
• Experience with a switch SDK and L2 networking protocols, including RSTP, BFD, MPLS, and ARP
• Experience developing embedded and low-level networking software systems in C/C++ or Rust

• Experience developing…