Company Overview
[$COMPANY_OVERVIEW]
Role Overview
[$COMPANY_NAME] is hiring a Senior Amazon Engineer to lead the design, implementation, and operationalization of high-throughput, resilient cloud-native systems on Amazon Web Services (AWS). In this role you will architect large-scale distributed services, drive infrastructure-as-code standards, and own production reliability, security, and cost optimization for mission-critical workloads. You will partner with product, security, and data teams to translate business requirements into scalable, observable, and maintainable systems.
Responsibilities
- Architect and implement distributed systems on AWS using services such as EC2, ECS/EKS, Lambda, API Gateway, SQS, SNS, Kinesis, DynamoDB, RDS, ElastiCache, and S3 to meet latency, throughput, and availability targets.
- Drive infrastructure-as-code (IaC) at scale using Terraform and CloudFormation, author reusable modules, and maintain drift detection and CI for provisioning pipelines.
- Design and lead migration strategies from monoliths to microservices and containerized workloads (Docker, Kubernetes/EKS), including API versioning, service discovery, and circuit breaking patterns.
- Define and enforce observability standards: distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry/Zipkin/Jaeger), structured logging, metrics (Prometheus/Grafana), and alerting (PagerDuty/Slack integrations) to reduce mean time to recovery (MTTR).
- Own performance tuning, capacity planning, cost optimization (Savings Plans, Reserved Instances, right-sizing), and SLO/SLI/SLA definitions for services.
- Lead runbooks and incident response: perform post-incident root cause analysis, publish ADRs, and implement automated remediation where appropriate.
- Collaborate with security and compliance teams to implement IAM least-privilege, VPC design, KMS encryption, logging pipelines, and automated security scans in CI/CD.
- Mentor engineers: run architecture reviews, lead code reviews, provide technical leadership on cross-functional projects, and foster a culture of measurable engineering excellence.
- Contribute to technical roadmap and long-term platform strategy, evaluating emerging AWS services and third-party tools to accelerate delivery and reduce operational burden.
Required and Preferred Qualifications
Required:
- 8+ years software engineering experience with 4+ years designing and operating production systems on AWS at scale.
- Deep expertise in building cloud-native applications using microservices, serverless, or containerized architectures.
- Proven track record authoring and maintaining infrastructure-as-code using Terraform and/or CloudFormation, including module design and testing.
- Strong programming skills in at least one backend language (Go, Java, Kotlin, Python, or Node.js) with production-quality code, unit/integration tests, and CI/CD pipelines.
- Experience with observability tools and distributed tracing, and a demonstrable history reducing MTTR through instrumentation and SLO-driven development.
- Solid understanding of networking (VPCs, subnets, routing, NAT, load balancing), storage (S3 lifecycle, EBS, EFS), and database selection trade-offs (DynamoDB, Postgres/RDS).
- Excellent debugging skills for complex production incidents using DataDog, CloudWatch, X-Ray, or similar tools.
- Experience leading technical decisions, writing Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), and mentoring engineering teams.
Preferred:
- Certifications such as AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional, AWS Certified DevOps Engineer, or equivalent cloud certifications.
- Experience with Kubernetes at scale (EKS), custom operators, and service mesh (Istio/Linkerd).
- Familiarity with event-driven architectures, Kafka/Kinesis, and stream processing frameworks.
- Experience implementing GitOps workflows, Argo CD/Flux, and advanced CI systems (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, CircleCI).
- Background in high-throughput e-commerce, supply chain, or high-frequency data systems.
Technical Skills and Relevant Technologies
- Cloud: AWS (EC2, EKS/ECS, Lambda, S3, DynamoDB, RDS, CloudFront, CloudWatch, X-Ray)
- IaC: Terraform, CloudFormation, Terragrunt, AWS CDK
- Compute & Orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes (EKS), ECS, Fargate
- Networking & Security: VPC design, IAM, KMS, WAF, Shield, Security Hub
- Data & Messaging: DynamoDB, Postgres, Redis, Kafka, Kinesis, SQS/SNS
- Observability: OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, DataDog, CloudWatch, ELK/EFK
- Languages & Frameworks: Go, Java/Kotlin, Python, Node.js; testing with JUnit/pytest, contract tests
- CI/CD & Automation: GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Argo CD, Helm, Flux
- Cost & Ops: AWS Cost Explorer, Trusted Advisor, automated scaling and autoscaling strategies
Soft Skills and Cultural Fit
- Proven leadership in cross-functional teams: able to translate technical trade-offs to product and business stakeholders.
- Track record of writing clear ADRs, runbooks, and technical documentation that enable team autonomy.
- Strong communicator with experience facilitating architecture reviews and leading post-incident reviews.
- Bias for measurable outcomes: defines success via metrics (SLIs/SLOs), OKRs, and data-driven prioritization.
- Inclusive collaborator who mentors others, provides constructive feedback in code reviews, and actively cultivates psychological safety.
Benefits and Perks
- Competitive salary and bonus: [$SALARY_RANGE]
- Equity grants and long-term incentive programs
- Comprehensive health, dental, and vision plans
- 401(k) or local retirement plans with company match where applicable
- Flexible paid time off, parental leave, and family support benefits
- Annual learning & development stipend, conference budget, and internal mentorship programs
- Home office stipend and remote-first tooling for distributed collaboration
Equal Opportunity Statement
[$COMPANY_NAME] is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristics.
Location
This is a remote position within [$COMPANY_LOCATION]. Candidates must be legally authorized to work and located within [$COMPANY_LOCATION] to comply with local employment and tax requirements. A successful candidate will collaborate across time zones and may be expected to attend occasional on-site meetings or regional team events.
Application Instructions
We encourage applicants to apply even if you do not meet every single qualification listed. Please submit your resume and a brief cover letter highlighting relevant systems you have built on AWS, key architecture decisions you've owned, and how you measure service reliability. Candidates with partial experience but strong learning aptitude and demonstrated impact will be strongly considered.