AmazonSenior Software Development Engineer, Prime Video Personalization & Discovery
Amazon is hiring a Senior Software Development Engineer, Prime Video Personalization & Discovery in Seattle, United States. It pays $168k-$227k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Amazon.
Level's read on this job
- Works on AI ●●●○ is how Level rates this software engineer role: the daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
- Pay on this posting starts in line with the typical software engineer posting on Level.
- The posting mentions distributed systems, data pipelines and feature engineering among its tools and skills.
- Amazon has 21,000+ other open roles on Level.
- Posted within the past week.
AI in this role
Architect real-time data pipelines and feature-serving systems to power AI personalization models in Prime Video.
That's where you come in. As an SDE3 on PVPD's Data Platform, you'll be a technical leader for the online systems that turn raw customer behavior into fresh, reliable features and training datasets for our personalization and ranking models. You'll drive the architecture of the near-real-time signal path that takes a customer's latest actions (a stream, a click, a search) and makes them available to models in seconds instead of hours, directly shaping what customers see on the storefront while their intent is still fresh.
This is a systems-heavy role at the intersection of data and scale. You'll architect and operate low-latency feature-serving systems, streaming ingestion and processing pipelines, and the unified, extensible datasets that let a single investment in data quality, coverage, and freshness lift every downstream recommendation model, experiment, and science evaluation at once. You'll set the technical direction for the data contracts that keep online serving and offline training consistent, and you'll be accountable for the production reliability of these systems (freshness SLAs, availability, monitoring, and graceful degradation when upstream signals lag) because once a feature or dataset becomes a model dependency, it has to be trustworthy every time.
You'll operate with significant ambiguity and scope, often defining the problem before you solve it, and you'll raise the bar for the team through design reviews, mentorship of SDE2s and SDE1s, and close partnership with applied scientists and modeling teams across PV Personalization & Discovery to translate the signals that move the needle into reliable, production-grade data at incredible scale and speed. If you're excited about setting the technical direction for the real-time data foundations and enabler datasets that power AI-first personalization for one of the largest streaming audiences in the world, we'd love to talk.
Key job responsibilities
- Architect and lead the build-out of the online feature-serving systems that deliver customer-behavior signals to Prime Video's personalization and ranking models within a strict latency budget.
- Design and scale near-real-time streaming pipelines that take a customer's latest actions (e.g. streams, clicks, searches) from event to model-ready feature in seconds, meeting freshness SLAs end to end.
- Define and build the unified, extensible datasets and enabler data products that let a single investment in coverage, quality, and freshness lift every downstream model, experiment, and science evaluation at once.
- Set technical direction for data contracts and online/offline consistency that keep training and serving in sync, so features behave the same in production as they do in offline evaluation.
- Own production reliability and operational excellence for these systems, including monitoring, alerting, freshness and availability SLAs, and graceful degradation when upstream signals lag.
- Take ambiguous, cross-team problem statements through design, launch, and measured impact on model and customer outcomes, raising the technical bar through design reviews and mentorship.
- Partner directly with applied scientists and modeling teams, influencing their roadmaps, to turn the signals that move the needle into reliable, production-grade data.
- Work in an agile environment to deliver high-quality software, and help shape the team's engineering practices and standards.
About the team
In Prime Video Personalization and Discovery, our mission is to show a customer the right video content, in the right place, at the right time. We tailor PV for a diverse and global audience, so customers world-wide with different tastes and backgrounds can find something to watch and enjoy on every visit. We delight Prime subscribers by leaning in to the Amazon originals and exclusives that shape our brand and differentiate us. We grow our relationships with customers by leveraging our deep understanding of them to provide relevant and timely recommendations.
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
How we rate this
Senior Software Development Engineer, Prime Video Personalization & Discovery at Amazon rates 60 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Works on AI (AI Level 3 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Works on AI. The daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
- ●●●● 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
Pay
- This job starts at
- $168k
- Typical software engineer job
- $168k
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 data pipelines was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where feature engineering was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where streaming data was part of your work. What did you do?
- Describe a typical day in a role like this one: which parts run through AI directly?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: Distributed Systems, Data Pipelines, Feature Engineering, and Streaming Data. 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.
- Show where AI is part of your daily process, not a one-off project. This role expects it to be a running habit.
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