Are you a builder who thrives on designing software systems that operate at massive scale? Do you want your work to directly shape experiences for millions of customers? As a Software Development Engineer III at Amazon, you will lead the design and delivery of complex software systems, working across multiple teams to solve problems that don't yet have a defined technology strategy. You will own your team's architectural direction, balancing competing constraints to create solutions that are extensible, performant, and secure. Your technical judgment will guide critical decisions while you mentor and grow the engineers around you. If you're energized by ambiguity, motivated by impact, and ready to raise the bar on software quality, we'd love to hear from you.

Key job responsibilities

• Lead the design, implementation, and delivery of multi-feature software systems spanning the full development lifecycle, from defining product strategy through deployment and ongoing maintenance.
• Own your team's architectural direction by evaluating tradeoffs across scalability, maintainability, performance, and security, and influence technical decisions in systems your team depends on.
• Drive engineering best practices across your team, writing exemplary code that others emulate and conducting design reviews that ensure software is well-structured and coherent.
• Mentor and coach multiple engineers, providing technical guidance and career development support to strengthen your team's capabilities over time.
• Identify opportunities to simplify existing systems, reduce technical debt, and apply modern design patterns, including evaluating where generative artificial intelligence tools can augment productivity and quality.

A day in the life
You might start your morning reviewing a technical design document from a teammate, providing feedback that sharpens the approach before implementation begins. By mid-morning, you're deep in code — building a critical component or prototyping a new interface that defines the boundaries between services. After lunch, you join a cross-team discussion to align on an integration point, navigating conflicting requirements to find the simplest viable path forward. Later, you pair with a junior engineer to walk through a tricky problem, turning it into a coaching moment that builds their confidence and skills.

About the team
Our team is focused on building software that matters — systems that serve customers at scale and evolve to meet tomorrow's challenges. We value collaboration, technical rigor, and a genuine commitment to each other's growth. We believe the best solutions come from inclusive teams where every voice is heard and good ideas can come from anywhere. If you're looking for a place where your engineering leadership will have real impact and where you'll be surrounded by people who push you to do your best work, this is the team for you.

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

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