Sr. Security Engineer, Leo Security

Amazon is hiring a Sr. Security Engineer, Leo Security in San Francisco, United States. It pays $183k-$248k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Amazon.

Level's read on this job

Little AI ●○○○ is how Level rates this cybersecurity role: aI is not part of the work.
Pay on this posting starts 14% higher than the typical cybersecurity posting on Level.
The posting mentions security engineering, incident response and threat analysis 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

Senior Security Engineer for Amazon Leo focused on investigating security events, driving root-cause fixes, and scaling security automation.

security-engineeringincident-responsethreat-analysisautomation

Amazon Leo is an initiative to launch a constellation of Low Earth Orbit satellites that will provide low-latency, high-speed broadband network connectivity to unserved and underserved communities around the world.

We are a specialized security team that sits inside a global satellite communications business. Our job is to make sure security lessons become permanent: when a security event happens, we find the root cause, close the immediate gap, and build the mechanism that keeps it closed. We watch across the whole environment, spot the trends others are too busy to chase, and turn them into initiatives that measurably reduce risk.

We work shoulder to shoulder with the builder teams designing, launching, and operating the product, and we partner closely with incident response, detection, and enterprise security functions. Over the coming years our focus is shifting further upstream: getting ahead of incidents through proactive posture improvement, hunting for gaps before they are exploited, and investing in automation so security scales with the business rather than against it. If you want your work to protect customers of a system being built at a scale few companies attempt, you will find that purpose here.

Export Control Requirement

Due to applicable export control laws and regulations, candidates must be a U.S. citizen or national.

Key job responsibilities
You will analyze the security events observed across Amazon Leo, separating each one into the immediate fixes it demands and the longer-term, systemic trends it reveals across the organization.

You will prioritize this work by the severity and business impact of the threat to Leo, concentrating your effort on the most serious security issues and making sound risk-based trade-offs to deliver against them on time.

You will drive immediate fixes to closure by identifying the right team or individual to own each task, and by creating the mechanisms needed to ensure security outcomes are prioritized and tracked to completion across teams with competing priorities.

You will lead time-boxed Find and Fix missions to investigate and clarify emerging security trends, turning early and ambiguous signals into a validated understanding of the underlying problem.

You will own security initiatives end-to-end that resolve the root cause of systemic trends, favoring centralized, secure-by-default controls that measurably and durably reduce risk across the organization.

You will serve as tier-3 escalation support during security incidents, advise partner teams on difficult security decisions, and advocate for new detection mechanisms and testing tools that reduce security operations cost over time.

A day in the life
In this highly dynamic role, you will decide where your time investments deliver the most security value, balancing proactive posture-improvement work against reactive support when security events arise. Teams across the business will reach out for guidance on a wide variety of security problems, and you can anticipate questions like:

"What's the right way to handle authentication tokens in service-to-service communications?"

"We're planning a confidential new product launch and need to define its security requirements."

"We just had a security event and need to run a root cause analysis to identify and correct what produced it."

When you're not responding to builder teams, you will evaluate overall security posture across the organization to surface architectural defects, hunt for gaps before they become incidents, and propose new security initiatives that correct systemic problems. Through this blend of consultation, investigation, and long-term mechanism building, you will help maintain a high bar for customer security.

About the team
Why Amazon Security?
At Amazon, security is central to maintaining customer trust and delivering delightful customer experiences. Our organization is responsible for creating and maintaining a high bar for security across all of Amazon’s products and services. We offer talented security professionals the chance to accelerate their careers with opportunities to build
experience in a wide variety of areas including cloud, devices, retail, entertainment, healthcare, operations, and physical stores.

Training & 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, training, and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional.

Basic qualifications

- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field
- 5+ years of any combination of the following: application security frameworks, identity and access controls, incident response, mobile security, cloud computing and security, AI security, threat intelligence, and penetration testing experience
- 3+ years of cloud based solution (AWS or equivalent), system, network and operating system experience
- 5+ years of driving cross organizational security initiatives.
- 2+ years experience using AI to automate security.
- This position requires U.S. citizenship in order to access AWS GovCloud

Preferred qualifications

- Experience working in identifying security issues and risks, and developing mitigation plans
- Experience in threat hunting, detection engineering, or product/application security, including moving from a security hypothesis to a validated detection, control, or remediation within a time-boxed engagement
- Experience owning security remediation initiatives end-to-end, including scoping the problem, driving cross-team execution without direct authority, and measuring the resulting outcome

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.

Pursuant to the San Francisco 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, San Francisco - 183,000.00 - 247,600.00 USD annually

How we rate this

Sr. Security Engineer, Leo Security 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

Sr. Security Engineer, Leo Security is an open job at Amazon.
Level rates this role AI Level 1 of 4: Little AI.
The listed salary is $183k-$248k a year.
The role is based in US, CA, San Francisco.
The job was posted on September 9, 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

Security EngineeringIncident ResponseThreat AnalysisAutomation

Also common in cybersecurity jobs at this level

Python Azure Google Cloud Kubernetes Terraform Java

Pay

This job starts at: $183k
Typical cybersecurity job: $160k

This posting starts 14% above the typical cybersecurity job. See cybersecurity jobs

Questions you could be asked

Tell me about a project where security engineering was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where incident response was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where threat analysis was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where automation was part of your work. What did you do?

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: Security Engineering, Incident Response, Threat Analysis, and Automation. 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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