We are looking for a customer-obsessed Senior Principal Software Development Engineer to join our Engineering Services team. As Amazon's most distinguished individual contributors, Senior Principal Engineers are forward-thinking technical leaders whose architectural decisions and strategic influence shape the direction of entire organizations. In this role you will own the long-term technical strategy and architecture for the P&S Engineering Services portfolio — the cloud-native, production-ready software and infrastructure that our customers integrate into their own offerings — while simultaneously driving cross-organizational alignment on the most critical, ambiguous, and high-stakes technical challenges ProServe faces.
You will serve as a trusted technical advisor to Director and VP-level leadership, translating complex business goals into technology investments that yield measurable competitive advantage. You will personally tackle the hardest unsolved problems — those that span multiple teams, require novel approaches, and carry significant business risk. The ideal candidate is recognized as "one of the best" among their peer group: a pragmatic engineer who combines exceptional technical depth with the breadth to influence architecture, strategy, and engineering culture across organizational boundaries. As members of AWS Professional Services, we are not stewards of a single AWS service but of the entire AWS platform — keeping abreast of the ever-widening stream of platform improvements and new services. You will pioneer new technical spaces, evolve critical legacy systems, and lead cross-company technical initiatives that fundamentally change how ProServe delivers value at scale.
Deep expertise in AI/ML-driven applications, agentic architectures, cloud-native systems at production scale, and modern DevOps practices are highly applicable. You must demonstrate exceptional written and verbal communication — your documents and presentations should serve as examples of highly effective communication that influence VP-level decision-making.
Key job responsibilities Own the multi-year technical vision and architecture strategy for the P&S Engineering Services portfolio, mapping business goals to technology investments with bottom-line impact on the business Serve as trusted technical advisor to Director/VP leadership; influence planning strategy, set objectives that yield competitive advantage, and drive awareness of the impact and consequences of technology decisions on the business Lead the most advanced, difficult, cross-cutting, and ambiguous technical challenges spanning across the organization — including evolving critical systems, pioneering new technical spaces, and leading cross-company initiatives Align teams, organizations, and architectures to a coherent technical vision; ensure that multiple teams are delivering systems that fit well together and are focused on the highest-impact work Personally design and build the most critical systems; make game-changing architectural choices combining unique technical expertise with deep business judgment; know when to apply incremental approaches vs. recommend major refactoring efforts Drive cross-organizational alignment (up to VP level) on one-way-door architectural decisions with lasting consequences — influencing without direct authority across multiple organizations Establish and embody the standard for engineering excellence across the organization — code quality, observability, security, availability, operational excellence — holding peers and teams to a high bar Amplify impact through the broader technical community: educate on advanced technical issues, present at internal conferences, keep the organization up-to-date on technology trends and competitive positioning Actively mentor Principal Engineers toward Senior Principal-level impact; participate in Principal promotion assessments, performance discussions, and career growth guidance across the company Identify future skills needed across the organization and advocate for development/acquisition of those skills to senior leaders; scout and recruit top talent to Amazon Develop and institutionalize best practices; serve as a role model for Principal Engineer Tenets; drive adoption of emerging technologies (AI/ML, agentic architectures) where they create competitive advantage Communicate technical vision with exceptional clarity in writing for audiences from engineers to VP-level leadership; produce documents and presentations referred to as examples of highly effective communication Obtain/maintain AWS Certifications; occasional travel to customer sites (~20%)
About the team AWS Professional Services Product & Solutions (P&S) builds and operates AI-enhanced software solutions that transform ProServe from traditional project-based consulting to product-led, outcome-based delivery. We productize ProServe's expertise into scalable, repeatable solutions that accelerate customer GenAI, cloud, and industry transformation — reducing complexity, improving time-to-value, and driving delivery efficiency across the customer's cloud journey.
Basic Qualifications
Experience designing, building, operating, and managing large-scale distributed systems or web services 15+ years of software engineering experience with increasing scope and complexity Experience as a recognized technical leader influencing architecture and strategy across organizational boundaries (multiple teams/orgs) Demonstrated track record of making architectural decisions with lasting organizational impact and bottom-line business consequences Experience serving as a trusted technical advisor to Director or VP-level leadership Experience driving cross-organizational alignment on complex technical challenges without direct authority Expert-level system design and architecture skills across multiple technology domains Demonstrated history of delivering solutions that fundamentally changed how an organization operates
Preferred Qualifications
Experience architecting/operating solutions built on AWS at scale, or equivalent cloud platform expertise
- Experience developing, deploying, and managing AI/ML products at scale, including agentic architectures
- Recognized as a subject matter authority by both technical and business communities
- Track record of identifying technology trends and pioneering new technical spaces that created competitive advantage
- Experience mentoring Principal-level engineers and participating in senior promotion assessments
- Experience communicating technical strategy through Amazon-style narrative documents that influenced VP-level decisions
- Experience with competitive analysis and driving programs to address organizational technical weaknesses
- Published technical articles, conference presentations, or significant open source contributions
- Active AWS Certifications (Solutions Architect Professional, DevOps Engineer, or Machine Learning Specialty preferred)
- Experience leading cross-company technical initiatives with measurable business outcomes
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