Software Dev Engineer, GuardDuty

Amazon; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 144,000 - 194,000; Full time

Job summary

Amazon GuardDuty is a customer-facing threat detection service protecting AWS applications. The senior software engineer will build scalable analytics and ML systems, collaborating with scientists to extend detection into AI threat areas for models and generative AI apps.

The role involves end-to-end software lifecycle, on-call duties, and contributing to resilient, globally distributed detection systems in a highly available environment.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of non-internship software development experience
• 2+ years of design/architecture experience for large systems
• 1+ years of software development engineer experience
• 1+ years of designing multi-tier, distributed software systems using C#, C++, Java, or Perl
• 1+ years of OO design experience
• Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering or related field
• Experience programming with at least one software language

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate large-scale, distributed security detection systems.
• Extend GuardDuty into the AI Threat Detection domain for emerging threats to AI models and generative AI applications.
• Collaborate with scientists and researchers to translate research outcomes into production-ready systems.
• Drive the full software development lifecycle from scoping to on-call support.
• Conduct design and code reviews focusing on architecture, scalability, and performance.
• Operate in a highly available, customer-facing environment with on-call responsibilities.
• Participate in root cause analysis and long-term improvements to reduce recurring issues.

Skills

Distributed systems

C/C++/Java

On-call readiness

Security knowledge

OO design

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Tools

AWS

Hadoop

Spark

Pig

Hive

Lucene/SOLR

Storm/Samza

Job description

Amazon GuardDuty is a customer-facing threat detection service that is built to protect applications and services running on AWS. The service applies advanced data analytics to high-volume service logs and employs techniques such as machine learning, anomaly detection, and threat intelligence to identify and respond to potential risks at scale. https://aws.amazon.com/guardduty/

The Amazon GuardDuty team is looking for a highly skilled and innovative senior software engineer to help build the future of the service. You will work closely with applied scientists with Math PhDs, and security researchers to build advanced analytics and machine learning systems at AWS scale. You will have the opportunities to work in the emerging domain of AI Threat Detection, which extends GuardDuty to address the unique and emerging threats targeting AI models and generative AI applications. These include risks such as data poisoning, prompt injection, model exfiltration, and misuse of large language models. By developing detection systems for these evolving attack surfaces, you will help AWS customers adopt AI securely and with confidence. Our mission is to develop massively scalable, globally distributed detection systems that protect AWS customers from evolving threats and strengthen their security and compliance posture.

Key job responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate large-scale, distributed security detection systems.
• Extend GuardDuty’s capabilities into the AI Threat Detection domain by developing detections for emerging threats targeting AI models and generative AI applications.
• Collaborate with applied scientists and security researchers to transform research outcomes—such as anomaly detection methods and large language model (LLM)–based approaches—into scalable, production-ready systems.
• Drive the full software development lifecycle, including scoping, planning, design, implementation, testing, documentation, deployment, and operational support.
• Conduct design and code reviews, providing feedback on architecture, scalability, performance, and integration.
• Operate in a highly available, customer-facing environment with on-call responsibilities (typically one week every two months), and contribute to building resilient systems that minimize operational load.
• Participate in root cause analysis and long-term improvements to ensure operational excellence and reduce recurring issues.

About the team

Our team is dedicated to supporting new team members. Our team has a broad mix of experience levels and Amazon tenures, and we’re building an environment that celebrates knowledge sharing and mentorship. Our principal engineers and senior engineers truly enjoy mentoring more junior engineers and engineers from non-traditional backgrounds through one-on-one mentoring and thorough, but kind, code reviews. We care about your career growth. We try to assign projects and tasks based on what will help each team member develop into a better-rounded engineer and enable them to take on more complex tasks in the future.

Basic Qualifications

• 3+ years of non-internship professional software development experience
• 2+ years of non-internship design or architecture (design patterns, reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems experience
• 1+ years of software development engineer or related occupational experience
• 1+ years of designing and developing large-scale, multi-tiered, multi-threaded, embedded or distributed software applications, tools, systems, and services using: C#, C++, Java, or Perl experience
• 1+ years of Object Oriented Design experience
• Bachelor's degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field
• Experience programming with at least one software programming language

Preferred Qualifications

• 3+ years of full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, and operations experience
• Bachelor's degree in computer science or equivalent
• 1+ years of big data technologies such as AWS, Hadoop, Spark, Pig, Hive, Lucene/SOLR or Storm/Samza experience
• Experience with security and systems that handle sensitive data
• Experience in ML and MLOps in production
• Experience in AI threat detection

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

Our inclusive culture empowers Amazonians to deliver the best results for our customers. If you have a disability and need a workplace accommodation or adjustment during the application and hiring process, including support for the interview or onboarding process, please visit https://amazon.jobs/content/en/how-we-hire/accommodations for more information. If the country/region you’re applying in isn’t listed, please contact your Recruiting Partner.

The base salary range for this position is listed below. Your Amazon package will include sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs). Final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience, qualifications, and location. Amazon also offers comprehensive benefits including health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans, EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line, Flexible Spending Accounts, Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage), 401(k) matching, paid time off, and parental leave. Learn more about our benefits at https://amazon.jobs/en/benefits.

USA, MA, Boston - 143,700.00 - 194,400.00 USD annually