Senior Software Development Engineer, AWS EC2 Hyperplane

Amazon; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 130,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading cloud services corporation is seeking a Software Development Engineer to design and maintain its distributed network virtualization platform. The role involves leading technical decisions and mentoring teams while collaborating across functions. Candidates should have over 8 years of software development experience, expertise in languages like C++, Rust, or Java, and a strong background in design and architecture. The position is located in Santa Clara, California, and offers an inclusive culture and a commitment to operational excellence.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of non-internship professional software development experience.
• Experience as a mentor, tech lead, or leading an engineering team.
• Experience leading design or architecture of new and existing systems.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain highly scalable distributed systems.
• Lead technical design and architecture decisions for critical components.
• Mentor junior engineers and raise the engineering bar across the team.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams for customer-facing features.
• Optimize system performance through profiling and benchmarking.
• Participate in on-call rotations and troubleshoot production issues.
• Contribute to long-term technical strategy and identify opportunities.
• Write maintainable code in languages such as C++, Rust, or Java.

Skills

Design patterns

Network virtualization

C++

Rust

Java

Education

Master’s degree in computer science or equivalent

Job description

Hyperplane is looking for a Software Development Engineer for a critical part of its service that delivers a distributed Network Function Virtualization (NFV) platform. This team owns the data plane and distribution plane systems used for both customer-facing services such as NAT Gateway, Elastic File System, Load Balancers, AWS service endpoints as well as many internal AWS services. This is a balanced team of senior and junior engineers that has proven it can deliver very important features for our customers. The successful candidate will be comfortable dealing with ambiguity, be very customer-centric and able to think big.

The ideal candidate will be passionate about the potential of cloud computing as well as about building great resilient, scalable and high-performance distributed services. This strong engineer has thrived and succeeded in delivering high quality technology products/services in a rapid growth environment exhibiting abilities to prioritize well, communicate clearly and understand how to drive a high level of focus and excellence with a strong team. They are a seasoned, mature engineer who is comfortable working in a fast-paced team. AWS in general, and this business in particular, operates at very large scale and on critical workloads, so a passion and discipline around operational excellence is key. A high level of ownership and accountability is a must.

AWS Infrastructure Services owns the design, planning, delivery, and operation of all AWS global infrastructure. In other words, we’re the people who keep the cloud running. We support all AWS data centers and all of the servers, storage, networking, power, and cooling equipment that ensure our customers have continual access to the innovation they rely on. We work on the most challenging problems, with thousands of variables impacting the supply chain — and we’re looking for talented people who want to help.

You’ll join a diverse team of software, hardware, and network engineers, supply chain specialists, security experts, operations managers, and other vital roles. You’ll collaborate with people across AWS to help us deliver the highest standards for safety and security while providing seemingly infinite capacity at the lowest possible cost for our customers. And you’ll experience an inclusive culture that welcomes bold ideas and empowers you to own them to completion.

Key job responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain highly scalable distributed systems that power AWS EC2's network virtualization infrastructure, ensuring low-latency and high-throughput performance for millions of customer workloads.
• Lead technical design and architecture decisions for critical components of the Hyperplane platform, including packet processing, network policy enforcement, and traffic management systems.
• Mentor junior engineers through code reviews, design discussions, and technical guidance, raising the engineering bar across the team.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams including network engineering, security, and product management to deliver customer‑facing features and improvements.
• Optimize system performance through profiling, benchmarking, and implementing improvements to meet stringent latency and throughput requirements.
• Participate in on‑call rotations, troubleshoot complex production issues, and drive operational excellence initiatives to improve system reliability and availability.
• Contribute to long‑term technical strategy and roadmap planning, identifying opportunities for innovation and architectural improvements.
• Write high‑quality, maintainable code in languages such as C++, Rust, or Java, following best practices for testing, documentation, and deployment.

About the team

The AWS EC2 Hyperplane team builds and operates the foundational network virtualization platform that powers Amazon EC2. Hyperplane is a massively scalable, distributed system that processes trillions of packets daily, providing secure network isolation, policy enforcement, and traffic management for millions of customer instances across AWS regions globally. The team tackles complex distributed systems challenges at unprecedented scale, focusing on ultra‑low latency, high throughput, and exceptional reliability. Working on Hyperplane means solving cutting‑edge problems in network virtualization, contributing to infrastructure that underpins AWS’s compute services and directly impacts customer experience worldwide.

Basic Qualifications

• 8+ years of non‑internship professional software development experience.
• 8+ years of programming with at least one software programming language.
• 8+ years of leading design or architecture (design patterns, reliability, and scaling) of new and existing systems.
• Experience as a mentor, tech lead or leading an engineering team.

Preferred Qualifications

• 8+ years of full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, and operations experience.
• Master’s degree in computer science or equivalent.

Amazon is an equal‑opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status, disability, or other legally protected status.