Software Development Engineer II, AWS Compute Optimizer

Amazon is hiring a Software Development Engineer II, AWS Compute Optimizer in Seattle, United States. It pays $144k-$194k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Amazon.

Level's read on this job

Level rates this software engineer role Little AI ●○○○: aI is not part of the work.
The posting mentions AWS, Python and Spark among its tools and skills.
Level classes it as a mid-level role.
Amazon has 21,000+ other open roles on Level.

AI in this role

Design high-throughput data ingestion pipelines and data lakes to fuel cloud cost optimization modeling and recommendations.

awspythonsparksql

Do you want to build the large-scale data systems that help millions of AWS customers cut their cloud costs and run more efficiently? Join a team that turns massive streams of infrastructure and usage data into the intelligent recommendations customers rely on every day.

We are the Optimization Data team, the data backbone behind AWS Compute Optimizer and AWS's broader cost optimization products. Our job is to identify customer resources, collect the utilization metrics that describe how they run, and turn that raw telemetry into clean, reliable, well-labeled signals that our science and engine teams use to model cost-savings recommendations. Every day we ingest and process enormous volumes of metrics and billing data across EC2, Auto Scaling groups, EBS, Lambda, ECS, EKS, RDS/Aurora, DynamoDB, and networking resources — sourcing data from internal systems like CloudWatch, EBS Stats, Lambda Stats, and the Fargate control plane, as well as third-party products such as Datadog. If you enjoy working at the intersection of big data, distributed systems, and real customer impact, this is the place for you.

As a Software Development Engineer on our team, you will:

- Deeply understand the AWS services we optimize — how compute, storage, database, and networking services emit utilization and configuration data — and use that domain knowledge to design a high-throughput, highly available ingestion layer that reliably captures metrics for millions of resources with tight freshness SLAs
- Design, build, and scale data pipelines and services that collect, clean, aggregate, and label huge volumes of metrics with high reliability and low latency
- Own systems end to end — from architecture and implementation to deployment, monitoring, and operations across many regions, including GovCloud and isolated partitions
- Partner with data scientists and engineering teams to define the data they need and deliver it in clean, well-structured, intelligently partitioned data lakes that fuel modeling and recommendations
- Solve hard problems around data security, scalability, and cost efficiency, favoring serverless and decoupled distributed architectures so components scale independently and operational burden stays low
- Establish and meet ingestion and publishing SLAs, build in backfill and data-correction paths, and continuously raise the bar on data quality, operational excellence, and the customer experience

You'll join a collaborative group of engineers who care deeply about doing things the right way — secure by default, reliable at scale, and always focused on the value we deliver to customers. We invest in your growth, give you real ownership from day one, and celebrate the impact you make.

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
- 2+ 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.

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 - 143,700.00 - 194,400.00 USD annually

How we rate this

Software Development Engineer II, AWS Compute Optimizer 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

Software Development Engineer II, AWS Compute Optimizer is an open job at Amazon.
Level rates this role AI Level 1 of 4: Little AI.
The listed salary is $144k-$194k a year.
The role is based in US, WA, Seattle.
The job was posted on October 8, 2026.
Seniority: mid.
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

AWSPythonSparkSQL

Also common in software engineer jobs at this level

Python Kubernetes TypeScript React Docker JavaScript

Pay

This job starts at: $144k
Typical software engineer job: $167k

This posting starts 14% below the typical software engineer job. See software engineer jobs

Questions you could be asked

What's a project where you used AWS hands-on?
Walk me through how you've used Python in your day-to-day work.
What are the limits of Spark that you've run into, and how did you work around them?
What's a project where you used SQL hands-on?

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: AWS, Python, Spark, and SQL. 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.

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