Sr. Software Dev Engineer, Redshift Distributed Systems

Amazon • East Palo Alto, CA

1d

About The Position

Are you interested in building next-generation hyper-scale distributed systems in the cloud? Amazon Redshift is a rapidly growing, fast, and powerful fully managed petabyte-scale data warehouse service in the cloud. Tens of thousands of customers rely on Redshift to analyze exabytes of data every day to power their most critical analytics workloads. Join the Amazon Redshift Data Foundation team to solve some of the most challenging problems in petabyte-scale distributed data systems. Our team owns the critical foundation that underpins Redshift's storage, metadata, durability, and reliability guarantees — the cornerstone on which every query, every table, and every customer workload depends. You will dive deep into complex interactions within the Redshift engine, tackling large-scale, high-complexity problems that span data storage architecture, durability mechanisms, and performance optimization at massive scale. We're looking for an engineer with a strong understanding of distributed systems, storage internals, and the curiosity to ask the right questions as we build a best-in-class cloud analytics database engine. You will design and deliver features that keep Redshift at the forefront of cloud analytics — ensuring data is always safe, always accessible, and always fast. About the team Our team owns the foundational data systems that keep Amazon Redshift running reliably and performantly at petabyte scale. We build and maintain the critical storage, metadata, and catalog infrastructure that manages every table, schema, permission, and byte of customer data across the fleet. Our work spans storage architecture and data organization, in-memory scaling and caching, data durability and recovery mechanisms, and multi-warehouse metadata consistency. We tackle large-scale, high-complexity problems that sit at the intersection of distributed systems, database internals, and cloud infrastructure. We value operational excellence: automating away toil, building deep observability, and resolving complex customer issues. About AWS AWS values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the preferred qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn’t followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don’t let it stop you from applying. Why AWS? Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. We pioneered cloud computing and never stopped innovating — that’s why customers from the most successful startups to Global 500 companies trust our robust suite of products and services to power their businesses. Inclusive Team Culture Here at AWS, it’s in our nature to learn and be curious. Our employee-led affinity groups foster a culture of inclusion that empower us to be proud of our differences. Ongoing events and learning experiences, including our Conversations on Race and Ethnicity (CORE) and AmazeCon conferences, inspire us to never stop embracing our uniqueness. Mentorship & Career Growth We’re continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth’s Best Employer. That’s why you’ll find endless knowledge-sharing, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional. Work/Life Balance We value work-life harmony. Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why we strive for flexibility as part of our working culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve in the cloud.

Requirements

• 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
• 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

Responsibilities

• Innovate system architectures that address scalability, reliability, and performance for large-scale distributed systems
• Design and develop core storage, metadata, and catalog subsystems that operate reliably at petabyte scale
• Solve large-scale, high-complexity problems spanning data durability, availability, consistency, and performance
• Debug deep, cross-cutting issues that require understanding the full stack — from query planning to distributed storage to on-disk data formats
• Drive performance improvements in storage I/O paths, metadata access patterns, in-memory caching, and catalog operations
• Improve reliability and durability guarantees through resilient system design, automated recovery, and defensive engineering
• Mentor and grow junior engineers through design reviews, code reviews, and technical guidance
• Raise the bar on operational excellence by building deep observability, reducing operational toil, and strengthening the team's ability to resolve complex customer-impacting issues

Benefits

• Amazon package will include sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs).
• 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

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level