Principal Software Development Engineer

Amazon is hiring a Principal Software Development Engineer in Seattle, United States. It pays $200k-$271k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Amazon.

Level's read on this job

Level rates this software engineer role Little AI ●○○○: aI is not part of the work.
The listed pay starts 20% above the typical software engineer posting on Level.
Tools and skills the posting cites include AWS S3, AI agents and distributed systems.
Level classifies it as a lead role.
Level lists 20,000+ other open roles at Amazon.

AI in this role

Leads technical architecture for security and authorization on the Amazon S3 request path catering to new AI agent usage patterns.

AWS S3

ai-agentsdistributed-systemsapi-designsecurity-architectureauthorizationsoftware-engineering

Amazon S3 holds the world's data. Customers of every size build on it because it gives them durability, scale, and control they can rely on, and because the controls around their data are as much a part of the product as the storage itself. Every request to S3 carries an authorization decision, made in line, at S3's request rate, within a latency budget measured in a small fraction of the request. That combination of scale, precision, and speed makes security in S3 one of the most interesting distributed systems problems at AWS.

We are building S3 for the next kind of usage. AI agents are becoming primary consumers of enterprise data, and they reach for data in patterns, at volumes, and on behalf of identities that look different from the applications and people S3 serves today. We want customers to find the security model simpler and more capable as that shift happens, and to be able to say yes to new uses of their data with confidence. Leading that work is what this role is for.

We are looking for a Principal Engineer to lead the technical direction for security in the Amazon S3 API and Request Processing organization. This organization owns the S3 API surface and the front end of the request path, which makes it the place where every access decision is made. This is a customer-facing security role: you will shape how access to S3 data is expressed by customers, evaluated on the request path, and understood by the people who are accountable for it. You will work across S3 and with partner teams in identity, analytics, and AI, and your designs will be adopted by teams broadly.

The same request path carries S3's performance, availability, and the simplicity of the API itself, and these properties are designed together rather than separately: an access decision that is elegant but slow is not a good design, and an API that is fast but hard to reason about is not either. A Principal Engineer in this organization is expected to shape the request path as a whole and to grow their scope over time, in S3 and beyond it.

Key job responsibilities
Authorization on the request path. Lead the architecture of how access decisions are modeled and evaluated in line with every S3 request. This spans the policy surfaces customers work with, the evaluation and caching that keep those decisions fast at S3 scale, and a model that stays clear and predictable for customers as S3 continues to grow.

A security model customers find easy to reason about. Make the secure path the straightforward one: fewer independent things for a customer to get right, a clear relationship between access to data and access to keys, and controls a customer can explain to their auditors with confidence.

The request path more broadly. Bring the same depth to the other properties the API and request path deliver, including latency, availability, and the design of the API surface customers and AWS services build against, so that security is designed as part of the system rather than layered onto it.

Technical leadership across the organization. Set the standard for how a large engineering organization reasons about security in design reviews and threat models, act as a technical leader on problems well outside your immediate focus, and grow the senior engineers who will raise that bar alongside you.

About the team
The S3 API and Request Processing organization owns the API that customers and AWS services use to reach their data, and the front end of the path that serves every request. It is a high-scale, high-availability systems organization, and it is where the properties customers most associate with S3 are delivered on each call. The team works closely with partners across storage, identity, analytics, and AI, and its work is visible in the daily experience of nearly every AWS customer.

Basic qualifications

- Deep experience designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems in production
- Depth in at least one security domain relevant to this role, such as authorization and access control, identity, or applied cryptography, and the appetite to build depth in the others
- Experience owning components where correctness, latency, and availability all matter at once
- A track record of technical leadership spanning multiple teams, including designs that other teams adopted
- Experience mentoring and growing senior engineers
- Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to move between a design review with engineers and a briefing with senior executives

Preferred qualifications

- Experience designing authorization systems evaluated on the request path under a strict latency budget
- Experience with high-throughput, low-latency request serving systems
- Experience with policy languages, formal methods, or automated reasoning applied to access control
- Experience with key management and encryption at scale
- Experience with data lake or analytics security: fine-grained access control, row and column level security, or catalog-based governance
- Experience creating architectural vision and influencing groups well beyond your own organization
- Experience representing a technical strategy directly to enterprise customers and their security and compliance 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 - 200,100.00 - 270,600.00 USD annually

How we rate this

Principal Software Development Engineer at Amazon rates 25 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Little AI (AI Level 1 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Little AI. AI is not part of the work.

●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.

Key facts

Principal Software Development Engineer is an open job at Amazon.
Level rates this role AI Level 1 of 4: Little AI.
The listed salary is $200k-$271k a year.
The role is based in US, WA, Seattle.
The job was posted on October 13, 2026.
Seniority: lead.
Applications are handled by Amazon. Apply on Amazon

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

AI agentsDistributed SystemsAPI DesignSecurity ArchitectureAuthorizationSoftware EngineeringAWS S3

Also common in software engineer jobs at this level

Python Java C++Kubernetes TypeScript React

Pay

This job starts at: $200k
Typical software engineer job: $167k

This posting starts 20% above the typical software engineer job. See software engineer jobs

Questions you could be asked

How do you decide when an AI agent can act on its own versus asking for approval first?
Tell me about a project where distributed systems was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where api design was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where security architecture was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where authorization was part of your work. What did you do?

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: AI agents, Distributed Systems, API Design, Security Architecture, and Authorization. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.

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