Principal Engineer, Amazon Software Builder Experience (ASBX)

Amazon Development Center U.S., Inc.; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 260,000 - 380,000; Full time

Job summary

Amazon Development Center U.S., Inc. in Seattle is seeking a Principal Engineer to set technical direction for platforms and services used by thousands of Amazon builders.

You will tackle ambiguous, large-scale problems and translate them into durable technical strategies, guiding multi-team efforts and mentoring senior engineers. You will influence architectural choices, drive multi-year roadmaps, and partner with product, science, and engineering leaders to deliver scalable, reliable software

Qualifications

• Extensive professional software development experience and ability to design and architect new and existing large-scale systems.
• Experience designing and building large-scale, multi-tiered, distributed, or highly concurrent software systems.
• Deep expertise in software design patterns, reliability, scalability, and operational excellence.
• Proficiency in one or more modern programming languages (e.g., Java, C++, C#, or similar).
• Experience leading technical direction across multiple teams and influencing engineering decisions beyond a single team.

Responsibilities

• Set and drive technical strategy for complex, high-impact platforms and services used across Amazon's engineering community.
• Decompose ambiguous, large-scale problems into simple, scalable, and maintainable solutions, and define multi-year technical roadmaps.
• Lead the design and architecture of distributed systems that operate reliably at massive scale.
• Raise the engineering bar through design reviews, code reviews, and mentorship of senior and principal-track engineers.
• Partner with engineering, product, and science leaders to align technical direction with organizational goals and customer needs.
• Identify and prioritize opportunities to improve how builders develop, test, deploy, and operate software, including AI-focused opportunities.
• Influence engineering standards and best practices across team and organizational boundaries.
• Balance long-term transformation with incremental, measurable delivery of value.

Skills

Large-scale systems design

Distributed systems

Software architecture

Programming languages (Java/C++/C#)

Technical leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering/Math or equivalent

Job description

As a Principal Engineer in Amazon Software Builder Experience (ASBX), you will be one of the most senior technical leaders in the organization, setting technical direction for platforms and services that thousands of Amazon builders depend on. You will tackle ambiguous, large-scale problems that span multiple teams and systems, and translate them into clear, durable technical strategies.

Principal Engineers at Amazon are hands‑on technologists and force multipliers. You will combine deep technical expertise with broad influence - writing and reviewing designs, raising the engineering bar, mentoring senior engineers, and partnering with engineering leaders to make the right long‑term architectural and investment decisions. Your work will directly shape developer experience, software quality, delivery velocity, and operational safety at Amazon scale.

Key job responsibilities

• Set and drive technical strategy for complex, high-impact platforms and services used broadly across Amazon's engineering community.
• Decompose ambiguous, large-scale problems into simple, scalable, and maintainable solutions, and define multi-year technical roadmaps.
• Lead the design and architecture of distributed systems that operate reliably at massive scale.
• Raise the engineering bar through design reviews, code reviews, operational excellence practices, and mentorship of senior and principal-track engineers.
• Partner with engineering, product, and science leaders to align technical direction with organizational goals and customer needs.
• Identify and prioritize the highest‑leverage opportunities to improve how Amazon builders develop, build, test, deploy, and operate software - including opportunities created by Generative AI and agentic development.
• Influence engineering standards and best practices across team and organizational boundaries.
• Balance long‑term transformation with incremental, measurable delivery of value.

A day in the life

You spend your time where the hardest technical problems are. You dive deep into architecture, write and critique design documents, and get close to the technology to understand root causes. You are frustrated by inefficiencies that make building software unnecessarily difficult, and you channel that into durable solutions. You move fluidly between hands‑on technical work and high‑leverage influence - unblocking teams, aligning stakeholders, and mentoring the next generation of technical leaders. You think in terms of systems and in terms of the builder's experience, and you consistently simplify complexity rather than add to it.

About the team

Amazon Software Builder Experience (ASBX) is the AWS organization dedicated to improving the experience of software builders across Amazon. ASBX owns the foundational platforms, tools, and services that Amazon's engineering community uses to design, build, test, deploy, and operate software - at a scale measured in millions of operations every day.

Amazon builders are both our customers and our proving ground: the systems ASBX creates are used by thousands of engineers to ship features for Amazon's customers worldwide. Our teams work across the full software development lifecycle - source control, build systems, continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD), testing and verification, developer tooling, and the broader developer productivity ecosystem.

We are operating at an inflection point. Generative AI and coding agents are fundamentally reshaping how software is created, reviewed, and released. ASBX is at the forefront of reimagining developer tooling for an AI‑native future - where both human and AI builders collaborate to produce software faster, safer, and at greater scale than ever before. This creates a rare opportunity to influence the direction of software engineering practice across one of the world's largest and most sophisticated development communities.

Basic Qualifications

• Extensive professional software development experience, including significant experience designing and architecting new and existing large-scale systems.
• Demonstrated experience designing and building large-scale, multi-tiered, distributed, or highly concurrent software systems and services.
• Deep expertise in software design patterns, reliability, scalability, and operational excellence.
• Proficiency in one or more modern programming languages (e.g., Java, C++, C#, or similar).
• Experience leading technical direction across multiple teams and influencing engineering decisions beyond a single team's scope.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience as a Principal Engineer or equivalent senior technical leadership role at scale.
• Experience building developer-facing platforms, tools, or services (e.g., source control, CI/CD, build systems, testing/verification, or developer productivity tooling).
• Experience applying Genera