Sr. Software Development Engineer, Defensive Security

Amazon • Austin, TX

1d • $168,100 - $227,400 • Onsite

About The Position

Amazon Defensive Security is building the next generation of security products from the ground up. We're expanding beyond threat detection into a unified platform spanning threat detection, incident response, and digital forensics, protecting all of Amazon and its subsidiaries across endpoint, cloud, network, and application vectors. This is a rare greenfield opportunity: you'll be architecting and building an AI-first product from scratch, not inheriting legacy systems. We're looking for a Senior Software Development Engineer who thrives in ambiguity, thinks like a product architect, and brings a builder's mindset to defensive security. You'll be a technical leader on a diverse team of software and security engineers, shaping the architecture of systems that process millions of signals daily and making foundational decisions that will define how Amazon defends itself for years to come. This isn't a typical "maintain and iterate" role. We need someone who is innovative, adaptive, and culture-first. Someone who gets energized by blank whiteboards, challenges assumptions, and inspires others to raise the bar. You'll partner directly with security leadership across Amazon to translate complex, multi-variable problems into elegant, scalable, AI-driven solutions that safeguard Amazon's infrastructure and customer data.

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

Nice To Haves

• 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

• Own the technical architecture of critical components within our new defensive security platform, designing for scale, low-latency, and resilience from day one
• Drive the AI-first approach by identifying opportunities to apply machine learning, generative AI, and intelligent automation to detection, response, and forensics workflows
• Make high-judgment technical trade-offs across distributed systems, evaluating build vs. buy, prototyping emerging technologies, and selecting architectures that balance speed-to-market with long-term durability
• Influence the product roadmap in partnership with product and security leadership to define what we build, why it matters, and how it delivers customer trust at optimal business cost
• Set engineering standards for the team across operational excellence, security, testing, CI/CD, and observability by leading through example
• Mentor and elevate engineers around you while fostering a culture of curiosity, ownership, and psychological safety
• Navigate ambiguity and drive alignment by synthesizing discordant perspectives, making data-driven decisions, and influencing across organizational boundaries
• Own end-to-end delivery: design, build, test, deploy, and operate production systems with high autonomy

Benefits

• sign-on payments
• restricted stock units (RSUs)
• 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
• parental leave

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: Associate degree