Principal Software Engineer, AWS CloudWatch

Amazon is hiring a Principal Software Engineer, AWS CloudWatch in Dublin, Ireland. Level rates it ; you can apply on Amazon.

Level's read on this job

Little AI ●○○○ is how Level rates this software engineer role: aI is not part of the work.
The posting mentions Opentelemetry, Promql and distributed systems among its tools and skills.
Level classes it as a lead role.
Amazon has 20,000+ other open roles on Level.
Posted within the past two weeks.

AI in this role

Lead technical vision and architecture for the CloudWatch metrics platform, scaling storage, query engine, and OpenTelemetry ingestion.

opentelemetrypromql

distributed-systemscloud-observabilitysystem-architectureperformance-optimizationstorage-systems

Come build the next generation of cloud observability with us. Amazon CloudWatch gives every AWS customer a single platform to send, store, and query metrics from over 70 AWS services alongside their own application telemetry, using OpenTelemetry (OTLP) and PromQL — and the same platform powers observability for Amazon's internal teams and the new CloudWatch Omni experiences. As the Principal Engineer for the CloudWatch metrics platform, you will own its technical vision and architecture end to end — the distributed query engine, the tiered storage and long-term retention systems, and the ingestion and compaction pipeline — and drive its evolution for the OpenTelemetry era. We will look to you to make high-judgment architectural trade-offs across latency, cost, durability, and scale, to set the multi-year technical strategy, and to raise the technical bar across our Dublin engineering team and the wider CloudWatch organization.

Key job responsibilities
Set the multi-year technical vision and architecture for the CloudWatch metrics platform — query execution, tiered and long-term storage, and ingestion — and drive it across multiple teams.

Own the hardest design decisions on correctness, availability, performance, and cost for a globally available 24x7 service that customers rely on to monitor, alert on, and analyze their systems in real time.

Lead the evolution toward intelligent, adaptive ingestion and make the platform the default OpenTelemetry metrics foundation across Amazon.

Work backwards from customers — AWS customers, Amazon internal teams, and the Omni experiences — to influence the roadmap and shape how millions of developers and SREs monitor their systems.

Raise the engineering bar through design and code reviews, operational excellence, and deep dives into the most complex production issues, applying durable fixes.

Mentor and grow senior engineers, and represent CloudWatch metrics in AWS-wide architecture forums and the broader OpenTelemetry/Prometheus community.

A day in the life
On a typical day you might set direction on a hard architectural trade-off in the query engine or storage tiers, deep-dive a customer-impacting performance issue to its root cause, review a senior engineer's design for a storage or compaction challenge no one has solved before, or work with product and leadership to drive this years goals and or iterate on our multi-year roadmap. You translate customer needs into architecture, break ambitious goals into incremental deliverables teams can ship, and are the engineer other principal and senior engineers come to for direct feedback on the hardest problems.

Basic qualifications

10+ years of non-internship professional software development experience.

10+ years designing and architecting new and existing large-scale distributed systems, including design patterns, reliability, and scaling.

Relevant experience in high-performance storage, time-series/metrics systems, query engines, or database internals.

Experience setting technical direction across multiple teams and delivering step-function improvements to systems at scale.

Preferred qualifications

Deep familiarity with time-series data, metrics systems, and the Prometheus and OpenTelemetry ecosystems.

Experience with S3-based storage, stream processing (e.g., Kinesis, Kafka), and columnar formats such as Parquet.

Experience with PromQL or other time-series query languages, query planning, storage compaction, and performance optimization at scale.

Systems programming experience in Rust, Java, C++, or similar.

Experience influencing architecture across organizations and mentoring senior engineers.

Amazon is an equal opportunities employer. We believe passionately that employing a diverse workforce is central to our success. We make recruiting decisions based on your experience and skills. We value your passion to discover, invent, simplify and build. Protecting your privacy and the security of your data is a longstanding top priority for Amazon. Please consult our Privacy Notice (https://www.amazon.jobs/en/privacy_page) to know more about how we collect, use and transfer the personal data of our candidates.

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.

How we rate this

Principal Software Engineer, AWS CloudWatch at Amazon rates 0 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 Engineer, AWS CloudWatch is an open job at Amazon.
Level rates this role AI Level 1 of 4: Little AI.
The role is based in IE, D, Dublin.
The job was posted on October 27, 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

Distributed SystemsCloud ObservabilitySystem ArchitecturePerformance OptimizationStorage SystemsOpentelemetryPromql

Also common in software engineer jobs at this level

Python Kubernetes TypeScript React Docker JavaScript

Pay

Typical software engineer job: $168k

This posting doesn't list pay. Use the typical software engineer figure when pay comes up. See software engineer jobs

Questions you could be asked

Tell me about a project where distributed systems was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where cloud observability was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where system architecture was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where performance optimization was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where storage systems was part of your work. What did you do?

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: Distributed Systems, Cloud Observability, System Architecture, Performance Optimization, and Storage Systems. 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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