Senior Software Development Engineer, AWS Lambda

AWS Lambda changed how the world builds software. Developers write code, and Lambda runs it: no servers to provision or patch, and no capacity to plan. Every month, Lambda runs trillions of invocations for millions of customers, from startups to the largest enterprises. It powers web backends, APIs, data pipelines, event-driven apps, and AI agents.

We're looking for experienced engineers to lead the next generation of the Lambda data plane. The data plane is the set of distributed systems that receive, route, place, scale, and run every function invocation. It has to be fast, secure, and highly available at huge scale. We're also taking serverless into new areas. That includes new compute options like Lambda Managed Instances, first-class support for web applications, and richer ways to process events at scale. As a senior engineer, you'll set the technical direction for these capabilities and turn it into production systems.

This role suits builders who like hard distributed-systems problems: the low-latency invoke path, multi-tenant isolation, capacity management and placement, fast scaling, cold-start optimization, high-throughput event processing, and operating services where every millisecond and every nine of availability counts. We work in Rust, Java, and C/C++, from virtualization and microVMs (Firecracker) up to customer-facing APIs.

We're hiring for several data plane teams, so we welcome senior candidates from a range of backgrounds, whether that's large-scale services, systems programming, virtualization, stream and event processing, or developer platforms.

Key job responsibilities

- Lead the architecture and design of large-scale, highly available, low-latency data plane systems that handle customer traffic across AWS Regions

- Set technical direction across teams, balancing near-term delivery with long-term architecture, and influence the Lambda roadmap

- Own complex, ambiguous problems end to end, from customer need to design, implementation, deployment, and operations

- Drive major improvements in invoke latency, scaling speed, efficiency, security, and resilience

- Help define and deliver new serverless compute experiences for web, event-driven, and instance-based workloads

- Mentor engineers, lead design and code reviews, and raise the engineering bar across the organization

- Lead operational excellence: set standards for observability, deployment safety, and incident response, and drive lasting fixes

- Work with product managers, engineering leaders, and partner AWS teams to deliver results for customers

A day in the life

You might start the day leading a design review for a new scaling mechanism, spend the afternoon digging into a tail-latency problem across the invoke path, and wrap up mentoring an engineer through their first major design document. You'll work directly with customer feedback and production metrics, and your decisions will shape how Lambda evolves over the next several years.

About the team

AWS Lambda is part of AWS Serverless Compute. The Lambda data plane teams own the core invoke path, the worker fleet and virtualization layer, scaling and placement, event processing, and new compute models such as Lambda Managed Instances. We value ownership, operational excellence, and simplicity, and we invest in growing engineers at every level.

Basic qualifications

- 5+ years of non-internship professional software development experience

- 5+ years of programming with at least one software programming language experience

- 5+ years of leading design or architecture (design patterns, reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems experience

- Experience as a mentor, tech lead or leading an engineering team

Preferred qualifications

- 5+ 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

- Experience designing, building, operating, and managing large-scale distributed systems or web services

- Experience with Java, C++, or pother programming languages

- Experience designing or architecting (design patterns, reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems

- Experience with enterprise-scale infrastructure or development-based cloud programs/projects in a related industry

- Experience leading large teams, with demonstrable ability to hire, develop, and manage high-performing technical teams

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, WA, Seattle - 168,100.00 - 227,400.00 USD annually