Head of Software Engineering, Shield — DDoS Defense

Relha LLC; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 185,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

Amazon’s Shield team is seeking a Software Development Manager to lead a multi-disciplinary group building DDoS detection and mitigation systems. You will drive strategy, architecture, and reliability for scalable protection across the AWS cloud, while mentoring engineers and guiding cross-functional collaboration.

You will shape incident response, CI/CD practices, and proactive threat improvements, ensuring high availability and fast iteration in a rapidly evolving security landscape.

Qualifications

• Experience leading software teams and defining roadmaps.
• Proven ability to scale real-time threat protection services.
• Strong background in building multi-tier web services.
• Ability to partner with product, program management, security and networking teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow a team of software engineers building AWS Shield's DDoS detection and mitigation systems
• Define technical strategy and roadmap for scalable, real-time threat protection services
• Drive architecture decisions for distributed systems operating at massive network scale
• Own operational excellence — ensure high availability, low latency, and rapid incident response during active attacks
• Partner with product, security, and networking teams to translate customer needs into engineering deliverables
• Establish engineering best practices including code quality, testing, CI/CD, and on-call processes
• Hire, mentor, and develop engineers across multiple levels; foster a culture of ownership and innovation
• Manage sprint planning, prioritization, and delivery against pressing timelines
• Analyze DDoS threat landscape and drive proactive improvements to detection algorithms and mitigation capabilities
• Communicate technical progress, risks, and trade-offs to senior leadership and cross-functional stakeholders
• Balance long-term platform investments with short-term operational demands
• Champion automation to reduce toil and improve system resilience

Skills

Engineering management

Distributed systems

Threat protection

Cross-functional collaboration

Job description

Amazon’s Shield team is seeking a Software Development Manager to lead a multi-disciplinary group building DDoS detection and mitigation systems. You will drive strategy, architecture, and reliability for scalable protection across the AWS cloud, while mentoring engineers and guiding cross-functional collaboration.

You will shape incident response, CI/CD practices, and proactive threat improvements, ensuring high availability and fast iteration in a rapidly evolving security landscape.