Sr Forward Deployed Engineer, AWS Forward Deployed Engineering

Amazon Inc.; Melbourne; On-site; AUD 240,000 - 320,000; Full time

Job summary

Amazon Web Services Australia Pty Ltd seeks a Forward Deployed Engineer to embed with enterprise customers, designing, building, deploying, and running AI-powered production systems alongside the customer's engineering team. You own outcomes end-to-end, from prototype to enterprise-scale deployment, and create reusable architectures that scale the FDE practice.

Lead technical delivery across engagements, architect enterprise AI systems, and drive operational readiness while mentoring junior

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software development experience.
• 5+ years of programming in at least one language.
• 5+ years of leading design or architecture of new and existing systems.
• Experience as a mentor, tech lead or leading an engineering team.
• Experience communicating technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences, including senior stakeholders.
• Experience leading AI production-scale projects (developing AI agents a plus).

Responsibilities

• Lead technical delivery across customer engagements and own the technical strategy for complex AI programs.
• Architect and build production AI systems at enterprise scale with robust reliability.
• Define operational standards and readiness criteria across engagement scope.
• Scale the team's effectiveness by defining patterns, mentoring, and driving engineering excellence.
• Accelerate customer transformation by creating reusable accelerators and platforms.

Skills

Software development

Architecture design

Leadership

Mentorship

AI tooling

Agile

Stakeholder comms

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS or equivalent

Tools

AWS Services

AI/ML platforms

Job description

Job ID: 10585971 | Amazon Web Services Australia Pty Ltd A Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) embeds directly inside a strategic enterprise customer to design, build, deploy, and run AI-powered production systems alongside the customer's engineering team. FDEs write production-grade software and own outcomes end-to-end, from prototype through enterprise-scale deployment combining the technical rigor of an AWS SDE with the urgency and ownership required to deliver measurable customer business outcomes. They create reusable architectures, patterns, and engineering mechanisms that scale the entire FDE practice.

Key job responsibilities

• Lead technical delivery across customer engagements

  Own the technical strategy and execution for complex, multi-workstream customer AI programs. Make architecture decisions that span multiple services and organizational boundaries. Align technical approach with the customer's long-term technology strategy. Requires 30–50% travel.

• Architect and build production AI systems at scale

  Design the foundational architectures — multi-agent orchestration, enterprise retrieval systems, decision intelligence platforms — for the most complex customer engagements. Drive clarity where neither the business problem nor technology approach is fully defined. Build production systems that handle enterprise-scale traffic and reliability requirements.

• Own production excellence across workstreams

  Define operational standards, evaluation frameworks, and production readiness criteria for AI systems across your engagement scope. Establish mechanisms (testing strategies, observability standards, incident response playbooks) that ensure AI systems remain healthy. Drive operational improvements that raise the bar for the team.

• Scale the team's effectiveness

  Define engineering patterns, contribute to the interview and hiring process, and mentor junior FDEs into independent contributors. Coach others on system design, customer engagement, and production operations. Drive engineering excellence standards within your scope.

• Accelerate customer transformation

  Identify systemic opportunities to expand AI adoption across the customer organization. Create accelerators and reusable platforms that reduce time-to-value from months to weeks. Feed learnings back into AWS services and the FDE practice.

About the team

Diverse Experiences

Amazon values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the preferred qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn’t followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don’t let it stop you from applying.

Why AWS

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. We pioneered cloud computing and never stopped innovating — that’s why customers from the most successful startups to Global 500 companies trust our robust suite of products and services to power their businesses.

Work/Life Balance

We value work-life harmony. Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why we strive for flexibility as part of our working culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve in the cloud.

Inclusive Team Culture

AWS values curiosity and connection. Our employee-led and company-sponsored affinity groups promote inclusion and empower our people to take pride in what makes us unique. Our inclusion events foster stronger, more collaborative teams. Our continual innovation is fueled by the bold ideas, fresh perspectives, and passionate voices our teams bring to everything we do.

Mentorship and Career Growth

We’re continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth’s Best Employer. That’s why you’ll find endless knowledge-sharing, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional.

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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
• Experience communicating technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences, including senior stakeholders
• Experience leading agentic and spec-driven development at production scale (developing AI agents a plus)
• Experience with AI tools: eval frameworks, agent tooling, RAG pipelines, and prompt engineering

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or equivalent
• Experience working with AWS Services
• Experience building or deploying AI/ML applications at enterprise production scale
• Background as a founder, engineering lead, or startup builder with high ownership and urgency
• Experience architecting and delivering complex, multi-component systems in customer production environments
• Experience with React, TypeScript, Python, and/or Go
• Experience leading customer-facing technical projects or managing external stakeholder relationships
• 3+ years of experience working in an Agile, startup, or rapidly scaling environment

Acknowledgement of country:
In the spirit of reconciliation Amazon acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.

IDE statement:
Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status, disability, or other legally protected status.

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.

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Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status, disability, or other legally protected status. Veterans, military spouses, and people with disabilities are encouraged to apply.