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Principal and Senior Principal Engineer, AWS Compute and ML Services

Amazon.com Inc
  • Seattle, WA
    2 days ago

    Job Description

    We are hiring Principal Engineers and Senior Principal Engineers to join AWS Compute and ML Services.

    AWS Compute and ML Services is the compute layer the internet runs on. Millions of customers - from early-stage startups to the world"s largest enterprises - depend on us every second of every day. The problems here involve a level of scale that is unique among many axes: we enable a wide variety of hardware platforms, support dozens of geographies worldwide, land a large number of new servers every day, power a vast marketplace of AI models, and meet the security and commerce needs of the most diverse customer base in cloud computing.

    We don"t build on top of infrastructure. We are the infrastructure.

    AWS Compute and ML Services is entering its most ambitious era. AI workloads are demanding unprecedented scale, interconnect bandwidth, and placement intelligence. Confidential computing is raising the bar on what "secure by default" means at the hardware level - we"re building toward a world where zero-trust isn"t a feature, it"s the architecture. Graviton is redefining the price-performance curve with every generation. And customers are pushing us to deliver bare-metal performance with full isolation, at global scale, with millisecond-level responsiveness.

    We need engineers who can lead large teams to deliver what customers want in the AI era.

    What Makes This Different:

    You won"t be optimizing an existing system. You"ll be deciding what the system is.

    The Problems - How do you architect systems that serve more types of customers, across more hardware platforms, in more regions than anyone else - and make it feel seamless? How do you co-design silicon and software when the feedback loop is measured in years, not sprints? How do you build placement algorithms that simultaneously optimize availability, performance, cost, carbon, and constraints that haven"t been invented yet? How do you enable an AI model marketplace that scales from a single inference call to a 10,000-GPU training cluster? How do you make security guarantees that hold at every layer - from custom silicon to the application boundary - without sacrificing performance?

    The Constraints - Microseconds matter. Billions of dollars of customer workloads depend on your decisions. There"s no "move fast and break things" when you are the thing everything else is built on. You"ll navigate complex tradeoffs across performance, security, and cost while maintaining the highest standards for operational excellence.

    The Reward - Your work ships to every AWS customer. Not eventually. Not behind a feature flag. The abstractions you design become the foundation other services assume will always be there. You"ll serve as the technical conscience for one of AWS"s most critical platforms - the one everything else depends on.

    Key job responsibilities

    At the Principal Engineer level, you will:

    Own the technical architecture and hands-on delivery of critical systems - whether that"s compute platforms, ML infrastructure, serverless runtimes, security foundations, or custom silicon integration

    Drive end-to-end system design decisions across the full stack, from hardware interfaces to customer-facing APIs, where latency, security, and reliability are non-negotiable

    Lead cross-team initiatives spanning multiple AWS organizations to deliver cohesive systems, not disconnected components

    Author and champion technical vision documents, influence product roadmaps, and represent AWS Compute and ML Services in executive-level architectural reviews

    Make hard architectural calls at the hardware-software boundary where tradeoffs are permanent and impact is measured in billions of customer-hours

    Mentor and develop senior engineers - raising the technical bar through design reviews, code reviews, and hands-on technical leadership

    Establish and raise the operational bar: you build it, you own it, you make it better

    At the Senior Principal Engineer level, you will additionally:

    Set the long-term technical direction and multi-year engineering vision across AWS Compute and ML Services, influencing strategy at the VP and SVP level

    Drive large-scale architectural transformations that span multiple product areas and organizations, defining technical standards that become the foundation for the broader AWS infrastructure

    Serve as the technical conscience for the organization - making decisions that shape industry direction and influence how customers build on AWS for years to come

    Partner with senior leadership to translate business and customer needs into durable technology investments, aligning technical strategy across compute, AI/ML, serverless, and silicon programs

    Grow the Principal Engineering community - mentoring PEs, conducting promotion assessments, and shaping the culture of engineering excellence across thousands of builders

    About the team

    AWS Compute and ML Services sits at the intersection of the most important trends in cloud computing - AI-scale infrastructure, hardware-software co-design, confidential computing, and sustainable operations. The organization encompasses:

    EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) - the backbone of cloud compute

    AI/ML Infrastructure & Services - including SageMaker, Bedrock, and the platforms that power generative AI at scale

    Serverless Compute - event-driven and container-based compute that abstracts infrastructure entirely

    AWS Platform Experience - the tools and interfaces that make it all accessible to customers

    This is one of the largest and most technically ambitious engineering organizations at Amazon, with thousands of engineers across multiple pillars. You"ll work alongside people who"ve built the systems the industry takes for granted - and who are now building what comes next.

    We foster a collaborative, inclusive environment where diverse perspectives drive better solutions - and where the best ideas win regardless of where they originate. We ship fast and iterate with purpose, and we believe work should be meaningful. You"ll join a team that takes pride in building the platform the rest of the cloud stands on.

    Numbers & Facts

    LocationSeattle, WA
    IndustryRetail
    Company Size10,000 employees or more
    Year Founded1994
    Websitehttp://Amazon.com/militaryroles

    About Company

    At Amazon, we don’t wait for the next big idea to present itself. We envision the shape of impossible things and then we boldly make them reality. So far, this mindset has helped us achieve some incredible things. Let’s build new systems, challenge the status quo, and design the world we want to live in. We believe the work you do here will be the best work of your life.

    Wherever you are in your career exploration, Amazon likely has an opportunity for you. Our research scientists and engineers shape the future of natural language understanding with Alexa. Fulfillment center associates around the globe send customer orders from our warehouses to doorsteps. Product managers set feature requirements, strategy, and marketing messages for brand new customer experiences. And as we grow, we’ll add jobs that haven’t been invented yet.

    It’s Always Day 1
    At Amazon, it’s always “Day 1.” Now, what does this mean and why does it matter? It means that our approach remains the same as it was on Amazon’s very first day – to make smart, fast decisions, stay nimble, invent, and stay focused on delighting our customers. In our 2016 shareholder letter, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos shared his thoughts on how to keep up a Day 1 company mindset. “Staying in Day 1 requires you to experiment patiently, accept failures, plant seeds, protect saplings, and double down when you see customer delight,” he wrote. “A customer-obsessed culture best creates the conditions where all of that can happen.” You can read the full letter here

    Our Leadership Principles
    Our Leadership Principles help us keep a Day 1 mentality. They aren’t just a pretty inspirational wall hanging. Amazonians use them, every day, whether they’re discussing ideas for new projects, deciding on the best solution for a customer’s problem, or interviewing candidates. To read through our Leadership Principles from Customer Obsession to Bias for Action, visit https://www.amazon.jobs/principles

    Skills

    • Algorithmsunmatched
    • Amazon Web Services (AWS)unmatched
    • Application Programming Interface (API)unmatched
    • Architectural Servicesunmatched
    • Artificial Intelligence (AI)unmatched
    • Cloud Computingunmatched
    • Code Reviewsunmatched
    • Computer Operationsunmatched
    • Computer Servicesunmatched
    • Computer Systemsunmatched
    • Computer Visionunmatched
    • Customer Relationsunmatched
    • GPU (Graphics Processing Unit)unmatched
    • Hardware Administrationunmatched
    • Leadershipunmatched
    • Mentoringunmatched
    • Multiplatform/Cross-Platformunmatched
    • Performance Tuning/Optimizationunmatched
    • Product Planningunmatched
    • Software Designunmatched
    • Standards Developmentunmatched
    • Startupunmatched
    • System Architectureunmatched
    • Team Lead/Managerunmatched
    • Team Playerunmatched
    • Technical Leadershipunmatched
    • Technical Recruitingunmatched
    • Technical Strategyunmatched
    • Technical Writingunmatched
    • Technical/Engineering Designunmatched
    • Writing Skillsunmatched

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