Senior Software Development Engineer, Software Defined Network Control Plane, Amazon Leo

Amazon Leo is building a constellation of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites to deliver low-latency, high-speed broadband connectivity to unserved and underserved communities around the world. With hundreds of satellites already in orbit and the service now in beta, we are scaling rapidly and building new features across the network. As a Senior Software Development Engineer on the Software Defined Networking (SDN) Control Plane team, you will lead the design and development of the network control plane that orchestrates traffic across satellites, customer terminals, gateways, and terrestrial infrastructure. You will tackle multi-dimensional problems at global, set technical direction for your team, and collaborate closely with hardware teams, scientists, embedded software engineers, and mission operations to shape how our network performs and grows.

Export Control Requirement:

Due to applicable export control laws and regulations, candidates must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (i.e., current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum.

Key job responsibilities

• Design and deliver scalable, high-throughput, low-latency services for the SDN control plane, defining conventions and technical solutions that guide the team"s engineering direction.
• Build link planning, routing, and control plane delivery services in Rust for network nodes spanning satellite and terrestrial infrastructure.
• Develop highly available control plane services along with the operational tooling, dashboards, and observability features needed to monitor and maintain system health.
• Collaborate with hardware teams, scientists, embedded software engineers, mission planning, and mission operations to ensure the control plane integrates cleanly across the broader Leo network.
• Drive software quality across the full lifecycle - from technical design and code review through testing, deployment, and on-call operational support - while mentoring other engineers on best practices.

A day in the life

Your week balances focused, heads-down engineering with regular collaboration. You participate in standups, design reviews, operations reviews, and weekly demos where the team shares progress and gathers feedback. Between those touchpoints you work independently on roadmap-driven projects - designing control plane features, writing and reviewing code, or building observability tooling that keeps the network running smoothly. Because the SDN sits at the center of the Leo network, you regularly connect with partner teams in hardware, embedded software, and mission operations to align on interfaces and resolve cross-system challenges.

About the team

The SDN Control Plane team builds and operates the brain of the Leo network. We own the distributed systems that route traffic across a growing constellation of LEO satellites, customer terminals, gateways, and terrestrial links. Our work directly determines the quality of service our customers experience.

We are a collaborative, roadmap-driven team that values thoughtful design and operational rigor. You will receive guidance from peers and engineering leadership, and you will have the opportunity to grow your technical leadership skills by setting architectural direction and influencing decisions that span multiple teams.