Principal AWS Database Architect: Scale & AI-Driven Systems

Amazon Web Services (AWS); Bellevue (WA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 271,000; Full time

Job summary

Amazon.com Services LLC in Bellevue/WA is seeking Principal Engineers to shape the future of cloud database services. You will architect and build scalable, resilient database systems at planetary scale, influencing roadmap and mentoring engineers across teams.

You will tackle challenging distributed systems problems, drive technical strategy, and engage directly with customers to translate needs into robust architectures. Join a team redefining how AI reshapes database infrastructure.

Qualifications

• A track record of technical decisions that held up—at scale, under pressure, over time.
• The instinct to build first: prototype to learn, ship to validate, and iterate without waiting for perfect conditions.
• The ability to influence without authority and earn trust through technical credibility.
• Experience working across organizational boundaries to drive outcomes that no single team could achieve alone.
• Comfort operating in ambiguity and a bias toward action.
• Curiosity about how AI is changing the way engineers build on and with databases.
• Deep expertise in one or more of: distributed systems, database internals, storage engines, query optimization, replication protocols, consensus algorithms, or high-performance systems.

Responsibilities

• Define architecture for services that cannot go down, cannot lose data, and must scale to meet demand.
• Drive technical strategy across your service area, shaping roadmap, investment decisions, and the direction of engineering teams.
• Solve distributed systems challenges and define reliable, scalable approaches for high-stakes workloads.
• Build, prototype, and ship production-grade systems trusted by the world’s largest enterprises.
• Mentor engineers and raise the bar through design reviews and technical judgment.
• Engage with customers running critical workloads and translate learnings into better architecture.
• Invent and evaluate emerging technologies, prototyping new approaches for AI-enabled database services.

Skills

Distributed systems

Database internals

Storage engines

Query optimization

Replication protocols

Consensus algorithms

High-performance systems

Job description

Amazon.com Services LLC in Bellevue/WA is seeking Principal Engineers to shape the future of cloud database services. You will architect and build scalable, resilient database systems at planetary scale, influencing roadmap and mentoring engineers across teams.

You will tackle challenging distributed systems problems, drive technical strategy, and engage directly with customers to translate needs into robust architectures. Join a team redefining how AI reshapes database infrastructure.