Principal Engineer, Builder Experience & AI Platforms

Amazon Web Services (AWS); Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 230,000 - 311,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k) matching

Paid time off

Job summary

Amazon Development Center U.S., Inc. seeks a Principal Engineer for ASBX, shaping technical direction for platforms used by thousands of Amazon builders. You will drive architecture across teams, mentor senior engineers, and partner with leaders to invest in long-term platform strategies.

You’ll influence developer experience, software quality, and delivery velocity at scale, balancing hands-on work with strategic impact in an AI-enabled future.

Qualifications

• Significant experience designing and architecting 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's scope.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

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.

Skills

Large-scale systems

Distributed systems

Software design

Programming languages

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

CI/CD tooling

Job description

Amazon Development Center U.S., Inc. seeks a Principal Engineer for ASBX, shaping technical direction for platforms used by thousands of Amazon builders. You will drive architecture across teams, mentor senior engineers, and partner with leaders to invest in long-term platform strategies.

You’ll influence developer experience, software quality, and delivery velocity at scale, balancing hands-on work with strategic impact in an AI-enabled future.