Senior OS Engineer – Container OS, Security & Open Source

Amazon Web Services (AWS); Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 168,000 - 227,000; Full time

Job summary

Amazon Development Center U.S., Inc. in Seattle is seeking a Senior SDE to join the Bottlerocket team, building a Linux-based OS for containers. You will own major OS components, from update mechanisms to security hardening, and ship open-source contributions and AWS features.

This role blends systems programming with high-level architecture, requires mentoring and design leadership, and offers opportunities to influence scale across EKS, ECS, and bare-metal workloads.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of non-internship professional software development experience.
• 5+ years of programming with at least one programming language.
• 5+ years of leading design or architecture of new and existing systems.
• Experience as a mentor, tech lead or leading an engineering team.

Responsibilities

• Design & build OS components — Develop and maintain core Bottlerocket subsystems (update engine, API server, host-container orchestration, settings management).
• Security-first development — Implement and maintain security features
• Open-source stewardship — Participate in upstream communities, review external contributions, publish RFCs, and maintain public documentation and tooling.
• Cross-team integration — Collaborate with internal and external partner teams to ensure Bottlerocket meets orchestrator requirements and customer needs.
• Operational excellence — Own the build and release pipeline (including Twoliter, the Bottlerocket build system), drive quality through automated testing, and support production rollouts.
• Mentorship & technical leadership — Raise the bar through design reviews, code reviews, and mentoring junior engineers on systems programming best practices.

Skills

5+ years software development

5+ years programming

5+ years leading design

Mentor / tech lead

Job description

Amazon Development Center U.S., Inc. in Seattle is seeking a Senior SDE to join the Bottlerocket team, building a Linux-based OS for containers. You will own major OS components, from update mechanisms to security hardening, and ship open-source contributions and AWS features.

This role blends systems programming with high-level architecture, requires mentoring and design leadership, and offers opportunities to influence scale across EKS, ECS, and bare-metal workloads.