Senior Software Development Manager, S3

Amazon is hiring a Senior Software Development Manager, S3 in Vancouver, Canada. It pays CAD 214k-CAD 358k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Amazon.

Level's read on this job

Little AI ●○○○ is how Level rates this role: aI is not part of the work.
The posting mentions Apache Iceberg, AWS S3 and AI agents 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

Lead the S3 Tables engineering organization defining technical vision and roadmap for cloud-based data storage and analytics systems.

Apache IcebergAWS S3

ai-agentsdistributed-systemscloud-storagedatabase-architecture

Amazon S3 Tables is the first cloud object store with built-in Apache Iceberg support, purpose-built for storing and querying tabular data at massive scale. It is fully managed, continuously optimizing, and delivers up-to 10x higher transactions per second than Iceberg tables on general purpose S3 buckets, all within the same foundation that gives S3 eleven nines of durability. Customers are bringing their most demanding analytics workloads to S3 Tables, from streaming ingestion of IoT and application telemetry to multi-petabyte lakehouses powering multiple AWS and partner query engines, and a growing wave of AI agents that query data directly through the Model Context Protocol. Our mission is simple and ambitious which is to make S3 Tables the best place on Earth to store and query Iceberg data, and reinvent what an analytics-native object store can be.

We are looking for a Senior Software Development Manager to lead the multi-team S3 Tables organization. In this role, you will own the technical vision, multi-year roadmap, and execution for the service, working at a scale that very few engineers in the industry ever encounter. Your organization will ship innovations that customers feel directly in query latency, cost per terabyte scanned, ingestion throughput, and the simplicity of running an open lakehouse on AWS.

This role sits at the intersection of distributed systems, open-source table formats, and large-scale analytics. You will help define how Iceberg evolves in the cloud, partnering with the Apache Iceberg community and with engine teams across AWS and partners to make sure S3 Tables is the gravitational center of the open analytics ecosystem. Internally, you will partner with S3 storage, indexing, and control plane teams, and with AWS analytics leadership, to deliver a service that is both deeply integrated and uncompromisingly open.

We want a leader who thinks big, invents on behalf of customers, and is energized by problems that only show up at S3 scale. The bar is high and the opportunity to shape how the world stores and analyzes its data is higher.

S3 Tables is a new, fast moving team building within the most durable and scalable storage system ever built. We are early in our journey, the product is young, the customer base is growing quickly, and the surface area in front of us is large. We are doing this in the open with Apache Iceberg, obsessing over customer workloads, and inventing in places others assume are solved. If you want to help build something into what it can become, rather than maintain what already is, this is the team.

Key job responsibilities
- Lead and grow a multi-team organization of senior engineers and engineering managers, fostering a culture of technical excellence, deep ownership, and customer obsession.
- Define and execute a 1 to 3 year technical roadmap, balancing near-term customer wins with long-horizon bets on query performance, table maintenance, metadata scale, and Iceberg evolution.
- Drive architectural decisions for distributed systems at exabyte scale, including metadata services, compaction and optimization pipelines, snapshot and transaction management, and engine integrations.
- Make S3 Tables the highest performing, most cost effective home for Apache Iceberg anywhere, and contribute back to the Iceberg open source project.
- Partner with product, business, and AWS analytics leadership to translate customer needs into engineering priorities that move adoption and trust.
- Establish operational excellence standards across availability, durability, latency, and throughput, and lead the org in exceeding them as the service scales.
- Recruit, develop, and retain top talent, building a diverse, high performing organization with a strong pipeline of future leaders.
- Represent S3 Tables in senior leadership reviews, customer engagements, and external forums with clarity and conviction.

About the team
ABOUT AWS:
Diverse Experiences
Amazon values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the preferred qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn’t followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don’t let it stop you from applying.

Why AWS
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. We pioneered cloud computing and never stopped innovating — that’s why customers from the most successful startups to Global 500 companies trust our robust suite of products and services to power their businesses.

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 in the cloud.

Inclusive Team Culture
Here at AWS, it’s in our nature to learn and be curious. Our employee-led affinity groups foster a culture of inclusion that empower us to be proud of our differences. Ongoing events and learning experiences, including our Conversations on Race and Ethnicity and AmazeCon conferences, inspire us to never stop embracing our uniqueness.

Mentorship and 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, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional.

Basic qualifications

- 10+ years of engineering experience
- 5+ years of engineering team management experience
- 10+ years of planning, designing, developing and delivering consumer software experience
- Experience partnering with product or program management teams
- Experience managing multiple concurrent programs, projects and development teams in an Agile environment

Preferred qualifications

- Experience partnering with product and program management teams
- Experience designing and developing large scale, high-traffic applications

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. As a total compensation company, Amazon's package may include other elements such as sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs). Final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience, qualifications, and location. Amazon offers comprehensive benefits including health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, basic life & AD&D insurance), Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP), Deferred Profit Sharing Plan (DPSP), paid time off, and other resources to improve health and well-being. We thank all applicants for their interest, however only those interviewed will be advised as to hiring status.

CAN, BC, Vancouver - 214,200.00 - 357,800.00 CAD annually

How we rate this

Senior Software Development Manager, S3 at Amazon rates 20 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

Senior Software Development Manager, S3 is an open job at Amazon.
Level rates this role AI Level 1 of 4: Little AI.
The listed salary is CAD 214k-CAD 358k a year.
The role is based in CA, BC, Vancouver.
The job was posted on September 15, 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

AI agentsDistributed SystemsCloud StorageDatabase ArchitectureApache IcebergAWS S3

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 cloud storage was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where database architecture was part of your work. What did you do?
Walk me through how you've used Apache Iceberg in your day-to-day work.

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: AI agents, Distributed Systems, Cloud Storage, Database Architecture, and Apache Iceberg. 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.

Get your CV reviewed before you apply

Send your CV and the role you want next. Your review arrives by email within 3 days.

Get a free CV review Check your resume with the ATS resume checker