Senior Software Development Engineer, Leo Security

Amazon is hiring a Senior Software Development Engineer, Leo Security in Arlington, United States. It pays $168k-$227k 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 Large Language Models, Knowledge Graph and distributed systems among its tools and skills.
Level classes it as a senior role.
Amazon has 20,000+ other open roles on Level.

AI in this role

Build a neuro-symbolic reasoning and LLM-powered security automation platform to defend satellite ground infrastructure and manufacturing lines.

Large Language ModelsKnowledge Graph

distributed-systemssecurity-engineeringneuro-symbolic-reasoningincident-responseautomation

Amazon Leo is a constellation of Low Earth Orbit satellites that will provide low-latency, high-speed broadband network connectivity to unserved and underserved communities around the world.

We are looking for a senior software development engineer to be a founding engineer on the Engineering and R&D team within Leo Infrastructure and IP Security. The team defends the manufacturing lines, launch sites, and global ground infrastructure behind the constellation from the most sophisticated threat actors on the planet. You will build a neuro-symbolic reasoning platform: large language model agents combined with a knowledge graph and real-time asset state store that ground every conclusion in verifiable fact, so every automated decision is auditable. The platform automates incident response, threat analysis, offensive security testing, and detection authoring, backed by a high-throughput streaming pipeline that takes a detection from concept to production in hours. This is a unique opportunity to build a security platform from early stage through global scale, at a consequence level few teams ever encounter.

Export Control Requirement

Due to applicable export control laws and regulations, candidates must be a U.S. citizen.

Key job responsibilities
You will own architecture decisions across the platform, providing system-wide design guidance and ensuring our services are secure, scalable, and operationally simple. You will design and build the distributed systems that carry the platform, from telemetry ingestion and real-time correlation through agent execution and observability, in an environment where a wrong automated action has real operational consequences. You will drive automation relentlessly: replacing manual security operations with software, building the evaluation and backtesting infrastructure that proves a model or detection is correct before it is trusted in production, and creating deployment guardrails that prevent human error in high-consequence environments. You will partner with applied scientists to turn research prototypes into production capabilities, mentor engineers, lead design reviews, and set the standard for code quality across the team. You will operate what you build, owning operational health, incident response, and reliability for services the security organization depends on.

A day in the life
One morning you might lead a design review for a new detection pipeline stage, challenging the team to eliminate every manual step and asking what happens when each component fails or is fed hostile input. That afternoon you could be writing code to tighten the guardrails on an agent tool, or profiling the correlation path to shave seconds off the time from event to detection. The next day you might investigate an anomalous pattern in your service metrics, treating it as hostile until proven otherwise, then work with a scientist to backtest a candidate detection against retained telemetry before it ships. You will obsess over the two latencies that define the platform, the time from event to detection and the time from detection to containment action, and question any process that relies on a human doing the right thing under pressure. The team is new, so the architecture decisions you make now will carry the platform for years.

About the team
Leo Infrastructure and IP Security protects the people, facilities, hardware, and supply chain behind a global satellite constellation. The Engineering and R\&D team within this organization builds the platforms and tooling the security pillar teams operate on, moving security operations from manual triage to correlation-based detection, automated response, and agentic AI. The team is composed of applied scientists, software engineers, and security engineers working across physical and digital security domains.

#### Inclusive Team Culture

In Amazon Security, it's in our nature to learn and be curious. Ongoing DEI events and learning experiences inspire us to continue learning and to embrace our uniqueness. Addressing the toughest security challenges requires that we seek out and celebrate a diversity of ideas, perspectives, and voices.

#### Training & Career Growth

We're continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth's Best Employer. That's why you'll find endless knowledge-sharing, training, and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional.

#### Work/Life Balance

We value work-life harmony. Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why flexible work hours and arrangements are part of our culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there's nothing we can't achieve.

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
- 3+ years of experience as a mentor, tech lead or leading an engineering team
- Experience with performance optimization, including memory management, multi-threading, SIMD, cache coherence, and lock-free or zero-copy designs
- Experience designing and building distributed systems, including consensus, message passing, fault tolerance, and real-time stream processing at terabyte scale

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
- - Experience building and operating systems that integrate with LLM APIs or agent frameworks, including tool-use orchestration, prompt management, and execution monitoring
- - Experience with graph databases, knowledge graph platforms, or large-scale data modeling (Neptune, Neo4j, or equivalent)
- - Experience building multi-agent orchestration systems with dependency management, parallel execution, and failure handling
- - Experience designing observability and instrumentation systems for production ML or AI workloads
- - Experience with any combination of the following: threat modeling, secure coding, identity management and authentication, cryptography, or network security

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, VA, Arlington - 168,100.00 - 227,400.00 USD annually
USA, VA, Herndon - 168,100.00 - 227,400.00 USD annually

How we rate this

Senior Software Development Engineer, Leo Security 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.

Classification

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.

Key facts

Senior Software Development Engineer, Leo Security is an open job at Amazon.
Level rates this role AI Level 4 of 4: Builds AI.
The listed salary is $168k-$227k a year.
The role is based in US, VA, Arlington.
The job was posted on August 14, 2026.
Seniority: senior.
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 SystemsSecurity EngineeringNeuro Symbolic ReasoningIncident ResponseAutomationLarge Language ModelsKnowledge Graph

Also common in software engineer jobs at this level

Python C++Machine learning AWS AI agents Kubernetes

Pay

This job starts at: $168k
Typical software engineer job: $167k

This posting starts close to the typical software engineer job. 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 security engineering was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where neuro symbolic reasoning was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where incident response was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where automation was part of your work. What did you do?

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: Distributed Systems, Security Engineering, Neuro Symbolic Reasoning, Incident Response, and Automation. 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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