Level

AmazonPosted 6mo ago

Senior Software Development Engineer , Stores Foundational AI - Rufus

Senior Software Development Engineer , Stores Foundational AI - Rufus at Amazon scores 91 out of 100 on AI centrality, which makes it AI Level 4 of 4 (Builds AI) on this board. The level measures how much of the work is AI, not seniority.

US, CA, Palo Altoseniorfull-time$193k-$262k

AI in this role

vllm
ai-agents
Join us in building the systems that enable Amazon’s AI to learn from real-world customer behavior and continuously improve at massive scale.

As a Senior Software Development Engineer, you will lead the design and development of critical data and distributed-systems capabilities at the center of Amazon’s next-generation shopping AI. You will solve complex, ambiguous problems and build scalable platforms that transform billions of customer interactions into high-quality training data, learning signals, and insights that directly improve large language models, agentic systems, and customer experiences.

You will own significant technical areas spanning data ingestion, behavioral intelligence, dataset generation, experimentation, and evaluation for large language models and AI agents. You will define technical direction, make architectural tradeoffs, and drive solutions across multiple teams and systems. Working closely with applied scientists, product teams, and senior engineers, you will translate evolving research and product needs into durable production systems and help shape automated, agent-driven workflows for continuous model improvement.

Key job responsibilities
* Lead the architecture, design, and delivery of scalable systems that transform real customer interactions into high-quality datasets, behavioral signals, and actionable insights for model training, post-training, and evaluation.
* Define and drive technical direction for data intelligence capabilities that analyze customer behavior, identify model quality gaps, and discover signals that improve large language models and agentic systems.
* Build and evolve reliable, self-service platforms for data ingestion, filtering, sampling, aggregation, dataset generation, quality validation, and exploratory analysis, with a focus on extensibility and long-term scalability.
* Partner deeply with applied scientists to define metrics, evaluate experiments and training data effectiveness, and translate scientific needs into scalable data recipes, learning signals, and production capabilities.
* Drive automated and agent-driven workflows for data curation, anomaly detection, experimentation, evaluation, and continuous model improvement, while maintaining high standards for privacy, security, reliability, and operational excellence.
* Raise the engineering bar by mentoring other engineers, reviewing designs, simplifying complex systems, and influencing technical decisions across team boundaries.

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
- Experience with vLLM, SGLang, TensorRT or similar platforms in production environments
- Experience with CUDA kernels or ML/low-level kernels

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 with Machine Learning and Large Language Model fundamentals, including architecture, training/inference lifecycles, and optimization of model execution

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, Palo Alto - 193,300.00 - 261,500.00 USD annually
USA, WA, Seattle - 168,100.00 - 227,400.00 USD annually

Prepare for this job

A free preview built only from this posting: what it asks for, what you could be asked in an interview, and how to adjust your resume.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

AI AgentsvLLM

Questions you could be asked

  1. How do you decide when an AI agent can act on its own versus asking for approval first?
  2. Walk me through how you've used vLLM in your day-to-day work.
  3. How would you decide a model or AI system is ready to ship?
  4. Tell me about a time a model underperformed in production. How did you find out, and what did you change?

Adapt your resume

  • List these exact terms on your resume: AI Agents and vLLM. 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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