Software Development Engineer III

AI in this role

Senior Software Development Engineer to build conversational, AI-powered content discovery experiences for Prime Video using LLMs.

llmspython

software-developmentnatural-language-processingmachine-learningrecommendation-systems

Prime Video Personalization and Discovery (PVPD) is seeking a Senior Software Development Engineer to join a small, high-caliber team building the next generation of Prime Video's AI-powered content discovery experience. We are reinventing how customers find something to watch: instead of browsing and scrolling, customers tell Prime Video what they're in the mood for, through natural language conversation, personalized prompts, and interactive recommendations woven directly into the product. You'll work alongside a hand-picked group of senior engineers and applied scientists, each bringing deep expertise in their domain, moving fast on a high-visibility initiative with significant ambiguity. You'll own your area of the system end-to-end: designing, building, and operating the services that combine large language models with Prime Video's personalization, catalog, and engagement signals to deliver conversational discovery at massive scale.

Key job responsibilities
Own the design, implementation, and operation of core components of Prime Video's conversational discovery platform, delivering production-quality systems in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment
- Design hybrid approaches that combine LLM-based semantic understanding with traditional personalization and ranking signals for content discovery and recommendation
- Partner closely with applied scientists and fellow senior engineers to prototype, evaluate, and productionize LLM-powered features including personalized conversation starters, natural language query understanding, multi-turn dialogue, and contextual recommendations
- Optimize LLM inference for latency, cost, and quality at the scale of one of the world's largest streaming services
- Build evaluation and quality-gating mechanisms that measure relevance, personalization, diversity, and safety of LLM-generated content before and after launch - Contribute significant code, conduct thorough code reviews, and raise the engineering bar across the team
- Uphold operational excellence for Tier-1 customer-facing AI systems, including on-call participation, root cause analysis, and driving reliability improvements
- Collaborate across team and organizational boundaries to integrate with partner systems spanning inference infrastructure, feature storage, and experimentation platforms

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.

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, Sunnyvale - 193,300.00 - 261,500.00 USD annually
USA, NY, New York - 184,900.00 - 250,200.00 USD annually
USA, WA, SEATTLE - 168,100.00 - 227,400.00 USD annually

How we rate this

Software Development Engineer III at Amazon rates 90 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. Open the description and count.

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

Software DevelopmentNatural Language ProcessingMachine LearningRecommendation SystemsLLMsPython

Questions you could be asked

Tell me about a project where software development was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where natural language processing was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where machine learning was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where recommendation systems was part of your work. What did you do?
Walk me through how you've used LLMs in your day-to-day work.

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: Software Development, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, Recommendation Systems, and LLMs. 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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