Software Development Engineer, S3 Storage Cells

Amazon is hiring a Software Development Engineer, S3 Storage Cells 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.
Tools and skills the posting cites include Distributed Systems, AWS and Storage Systems.
Level classifies it as a mid-level role.
Level lists 20,000+ other open roles at Amazon.

AI in this role

Design, implement, and maintain distributed system software for the Amazon S3 storage control plane handling massive scale.

Distributed SystemsAWSStorage Systems

software-engineeringjavacdistributed-systems

Managing trillions of objects in storage, retrieving them in ms, building software that deploys to tens of thousands of hosts, designed for 99.999999999% durability. These are just a few of the numbers that give you a sense of the scale of the exciting problems you will find every day working in Simple Storage Service (S3). Amazon S3 powers businesses across the globe that make the lives of consumers better daily. Whether its electronic content delivered to your home, technology that betters your remote working experience, allows you to plan travel to exotic places or simply get stuff delivered to your home. As a Software Development Engineer in S3, you get to deliver these capabilities and delight our customers through teams of talented engineers and leaders.

We are currently looking for talented software development engineers to lead innovation in our Amazon S3 storage control plane team. Our team is passionate about the incredible opportunity that Amazon S3 presents and about cloud computing, in general. You will have the opportunity to deliver high quality technology products/services in a hyper-growth environment where priorities shift fast. Responsibilities include:
- Design, implementation, deployment and maintenance of innovative software solutions to deliver new features in performance, cost, reliability.
- Use software engineering best practices to ensure the standard of quality of all team deliverables.
- Build and implement high quality distributed system software.
- Work in an agile development environment prioritizing most important and impactful projects.

Key job responsibilities
As an SDE in S3's Storage team, you will build the services that persist and retrieve customer data. The services you will own are the foundation of S3, and managing them at the scale of S3 provides challenging technical problems that you will solve. That scale provides leverage for your work to improve the experience of many customers, and you will tackle some of the most difficult problems in S3 head-on. You will be responsible for the design and implementation of new components and improvements to services within our space, and will work with other engineers on your team to deliver.

In AWS, if you build it, you own it. S3 is a highly available 24x7 worldwide service requiring dedicated support from our engineering teams. We pride ourselves on a high level of ownership in the work we do. This means we hold a high bar for test automation, verification processes, design, and code reviews to ensure that our systems meet the exacting standards we demand in service of our customers. We maintain a regular on-call rotation across our teams with engineers and managers all taking part to resolve the inevitable issues that arise. We work hard to minimize getting paged in the middle of the night as we recognize that operator intervention should be a last line of defense rather than the default option.

A day in the life
A typical day for an SDE in S3 Storage is based around writing code and solving problems at scale. On any given day, you may spend time delivering features and fixing bugs, add testing to existing code, improve operational tooling, collaborate with senior engineers to design new components that shape the future of the system, and build expertise in specific areas of the service and grow to be a subject matter expert in your domain.

About the team
AWS 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.

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 (CORE) and AmazeCon conferences, inspire us to never stop embracing our uniqueness.

Mentorship & 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.

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 we strive for flexibility as part of our working culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve in the cloud.

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
- 1+ 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, S3 Storage Cells at Amazon rates 0 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, S3 Storage Cells 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 August 26, 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

Software EngineeringJavaCDistributed SystemsAWSStorage Systems

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

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Tell me about a project where distributed systems was part of your work. What did you do?
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