Do you want to architect systems that process petabytes of data and power advertising decisions for millions of advertisers worldwide? Are you energized by solving hard distributed systems problems at a scale few companies ever reach? This is your opportunity.
Amazon Advertising operates one of the largest big data platforms on the planet — processing trillions of events daily across display, search, native, and video surfaces on every device. We're looking for a Senior Software Development Engineer to lead the design and delivery of our next-generation measurement and reporting infrastructure — the backbone that enables advertisers to understand, attribute, and optimize their spend across Amazon's full advertising suite.
You will define the technical direction for critical data systems, driving architectural decisions that balance scale, latency, cost, and extensibility. You'll leverage technologies like Spark, Flink, and Java alongside AWS services — EMR, Kinesis, DynamoDB, Bedrock, and more — to build pipelines and platforms that serve diverse consumers at Amazon scale. You'll own the end-to-end lifecycle: from whiteboarding system designs in ambiguous problem spaces to shipping production systems that handle billions of requests with high availability.
The ideal candidate has a proven track record of delivering highly distributed systems at scale, with deep expertise in platform design patterns — including SDKs, libraries, APIs, and versioning strategies that enable teams across the organization to build on your foundations. You are operationally excellent, technically rigorous, and thrive when partnering across organizational boundaries to align engineering strategy with business outcomes. You don't just build systems — you raise the bar for how your team and adjacent teams build them.
Key job responsibilities
- Demonstrate strong engineering fundamentals and apply real-world experience to solve complex technical challenges
- Showcase diverse architectural approaches and design patterns in technical designs
- Think big and stay informed about industry standards and emerging trends in the Ad Tech space
- Communicate effectively across all leadership levels, both verbally and in writing
- Lead deep technical discussions with senior engineers, collaborating to solve challenging problems
- Quickly grasp new systems and provide valuable technical consultation to stakeholders
- Drive adoption of agenting patterns for development and on-call support to deliver higher quality products faster
A day in the life Our team is responsible for processing all advertising events — over tens of billions new events per day — including impressions, clicks, and views across all Amazon products. We provide petabyte-scale, low-latency, and highly available event lookup services to a wide set of users within Amazon Ads.
On any given day, you'll be applying the latest machine learning and big data technologies to terabytes of incoming data, operating petabyte-size clusters that power advertising measurement at Amazon scale. Speed and accuracy are everything — our data enables advertisers to optimize ad spend and allocate budgets effectively by delivering accurate, actionable, and timely performance metrics across Amazon's full advertising suite.
About the team Join the Amazon Ads team! This is a unique opportunity to take ownership and lead significant initiatives, building innovative solutions to complex and challenging problems. You will encounter some of the toughest and most inspiring technical challenges of your career as you build petabyte-scale services, invent new big data paradigms, and scale for unprecedented growth.
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
Preferred Qualifications
- 5+ years of full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, and operations experience
- Bachelor's degree in computer science or equivalent
- Experience with big data technologies such as: Hadoop, Hive, Spark, EMR
Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status, disability, or other legally protected status.
Los Angeles County applicants: Job duties for this position include: work safely and cooperatively with other employees, supervisors, and staff; adhere to standards of excellence despite stressful conditions; communicate effectively and respectfully with employees, supervisors, and staff to ensure exceptional customer service; and follow all federal, state, and local laws and Company policies. Criminal history may have a direct, adverse, and negative relationship with some of the material job duties of this position. These include the duties and responsibilities listed above, as well as the abilities to adhere to company policies, exercise sound judgment, effectively manage stress and work safely and respectfully with others, exhibit trustworthiness and professionalism, and safeguard business operations and the Company’s reputation. Pursuant to the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
Our inclusive culture empowers Amazonians to deliver the best results for our customers. If you have a disability and need a workplace accommodation or adjustment during the application and hiring process, including support for the interview or onboarding process, please visit https://amazon.jobs/content/en/how-we-hire/accommodations for more information. If the country/region you’re applying in isn’t listed, please contact your Recruiting Partner.
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, CA, Santa Monica - 168,100.00 - 227,400.00 USD annually