SDE-II, Amazon OpenSearch Service
Amazon is hiring an SDE-II, Amazon OpenSearch Service in Santa Clara, United States. It pays $165k-$224k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Amazon.
Level's read on this job
- On Level's scale, this software engineer role is Builds AI ●●●●: the job is building AI systems.
- Pay on this posting starts in line with the typical software engineer posting on Level.
- The posting mentions Rust, Java and Python among its tools and skills.
- Level classes it as a mid-level role.
- Amazon has 20,000+ other open roles on Level.
AI in this role
Build and scale AI-powered migration systems and generative AI search workloads on Amazon OpenSearch Service.
We are building the next generation of OpenSearch Migration Assistant: an AI-powered system designed to make migrating complex search and analytics workloads to OpenSearch dramatically easier. Customers today run workloads across legacy OpenSearch and Elasticsearch deployments as well as other search, observability, and analytics platforms. Migration Assistant aims to understand these existing environments; determine how workloads, queries, and downstream applications should map to OpenSearch; automate the required transformations; orchestrate data and configuration migration; validate correctness and performance; and help customers safely cut over production traffic.
As a Software Development Engineer on the OpenSearch team, you will help define and build this system from the ground up. You will turn ambiguous customer problems into technical designs, prototype new approaches, and productionize them as reliable services used across AWS.
You will tackle challenging problems spanning AI agents, distributed systems, workload discovery and translation, cluster management, data movement and pipeline orchestration, query optimization, validation, and multi-tenant infrastructure. You will work with technologies including Rust, Java, Python, Go, and AWS services while building systems that must be secure, highly available, and capable of operating across AWS regions at massive scale.
This is a greenfield opportunity on a newly formed team with significant ownership over both product and architecture. You will work at the intersection of generative AI, distributed systems, and search, helping redefine how customers move complex production workloads from legacy and third-party systems to OpenSearch.
Basic qualifications
- 3+ years of non-internship professional software development experience
- 2+ years of non-internship design or architecture (design patterns, reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems experience
- 1+ years of software development engineer or related occupational experience
- 1+ years of designing and developing large-scale, multi-tiered, multi-threaded, embedded or distributed software applications, tools, systems, and services using: C#, C++, Java, or Perl experience
- 1+ years of Object Oriented Design experience
- Bachelor's degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field
- Experience programming with at least one software programming language
Preferred qualifications
- 3+ 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.
Los Angeles County applicants: Job duties for this position include: work safely and cooperatively with other employees, supervisors, and staff; adhere to standards of excellence despite stressful conditions; communicate effectively and respectfully with employees, supervisors, and staff to ensure exceptional customer service; and follow all federal, state, and local laws and Company policies. Criminal history may have a direct, adverse, and negative relationship with some of the material job duties of this position. These include the duties and responsibilities listed above, as well as the abilities to adhere to company policies, exercise sound judgment, effectively manage stress and work safely and respectfully with others, exhibit trustworthiness and professionalism, and safeguard business operations and the Company’s reputation. Pursuant to the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
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, CA, Santa Clara - 165,200.00 - 223,600.00 USD annually
How we rate this
SDE-II, Amazon OpenSearch Service at Amazon rates 85 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.
- ●●●● 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.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Also common in software engineer jobs at this level
Pay
- This job starts at
- $165k
- Typical software engineer job
- $167k
This posting starts close to 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 generative ai was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where search was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where software development was part of your work. What did you do?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: AI agents, Distributed Systems, Generative AI, Search, and Software Development. 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.
- Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.
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