Sr. Systems Development Engineer , Prime Air

Amazon is hiring a Sr. Systems Development Engineer , Prime Air in Seattle, United States. It pays $151k-$205k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Amazon.

Level's read on this job

Level rates this role Little AI ●○○○: aI is not part of the work.
The posting mentions Sora among its tools and skills.
Level classes it as a senior role.
Amazon has 20,000+ other open roles on Level.
Posted in the last few days.

AI in this role

sora

Prime Air is seeking a Senior Systems Development Engineer to own the certification requirements and the certification plan for the MK30 unmanned aircraft system. You will author the plan that tells regulators how we intend to show our design is safe, and you will negotiate the means of compliance that make that plan binding. EASA is our first market. The plan you write and the agreements you reach there set the template every market after it inherits.

Your core technical problem is that one aircraft must satisfy many regulators. Each country and region brings its own airworthiness requirements, operational constraints, and expectations for evidence. You will maintain the single authoritative set of certification requirements across those jurisdictions, analyze where authorities diverge, and drive the resulting requirements into the design. Where a national requirement would otherwise force a redesign later, you will find it now and get it into the requirements baseline. The goal is a design that clears today's markets and does not have to be re-architected for the next ones or for the aircraft that follow MK30.

You will work as the engineering counterpart to the Senior Technical Program Manager on this team. The TPM owns the plans, schedules, compliance tracking, and leadership reporting. You own the technical content: what the requirements are, how we comply, what evidence proves it, and what we have committed to the authority. When a regulator questions an approach, you are the engineer who defends it.

Key job responsibilities

- Own the certification requirements baseline across every jurisdiction Prime Air operates in or plans to enter. Maintain it as one requirements set with jurisdiction attribution, not a document per country.
- Perform regulatory delta analysis across authorities (EASA, FAA, CASA, DGCA, CAA, JCAB, and others). Determine where a single design and a single evidence set satisfy multiple authorities, and where they genuinely cannot.
- Drive country- and region-specific requirements into system, software, and hardware requirements early enough to shape the design. Protect MK30 and future designs from late, market-driven rework.
- Lead novel certification approaches for the Prime Air UAS aligned to emerging regulations.
- Author and own the program certification plan. Keep it current as the certification basis, the design, and the authority's expectations evolve, and make it the document a regulator can read to understand our design approach without a briefing.
- Build the evidence reuse argument that carries approvals between authorities, including bilateral validation paths, so each new market is a delta rather than a new program.
- Write the compliance arguments and residual risk positions for open items, deferred defects, and partially satisfied objectives, and defend them directly with authority staff and designees.
- Partner with the regulatory administration team to monitor emerging regulation and rulemaking, assess the design and requirements impact, and fold accepted requirements into the baseline before they block a market entry.
- Build the mechanisms that make this scale: requirements and traceability structures that carry jurisdiction tagging, reusable compliance matrix patterns, and plan templates that a second aircraft program can adopt.

Key job responsibilities
Prime Air is seeking a Senior Systems Development Engineer to own the certification requirements and the certification plan for the MK30 unmanned aircraft system. You will author the plan that tells regulators how we intend to show our design is safe, and you will negotiate the means of compliance that make that plan binding. EASA is our first market. The plan you write and the agreements you reach there set the template every market after it inherits.

Your core technical problem is that one aircraft must satisfy many regulators. Each country and region brings its own airworthiness requirements, operational constraints, and expectations for evidence. You will maintain the single authoritative set of certification requirements across those jurisdictions, analyze where authorities diverge, and drive the resulting requirements into the design. Where a national requirement would otherwise force a redesign later, you will find it now and get it into the requirements baseline. The goal is a design that clears today's markets and does not have to be re-architected for the next ones or for the aircraft that follow MK30.

You will work as the engineering counterpart to the Senior Technical Program Manager on this team. The TPM owns the plans, schedules, compliance tracking, and leadership reporting. You own the technical content: what the requirements are, how we comply, what evidence proves it, and what we have committed to the authority. When a regulator questions an approach, you are the engineer who defends it.

Key job responsibilities

- Own the certification requirements baseline across every jurisdiction Prime Air operates in or plans to enter. Maintain it as one requirements set with jurisdiction attribution, not a document per country.
- Perform regulatory delta analysis across authorities (EASA, FAA, CASA, DGCA, CAA, JCAB, and others). Determine where a single design and a single evidence set satisfy multiple authorities, and where they genuinely cannot.
- Drive country- and region-specific requirements into system, software, and hardware requirements early enough to shape the design. Protect MK30 and future designs from late, market-driven rework.
- Lead novel certification approaches for the Prime Air UAS aligned to emerging regulations.
- Author and own the program certification plan. Keep it current as the certification basis, the design, and the authority's expectations evolve, and make it the document a regulator can read to understand our design approach without a briefing.
- Build the evidence reuse argument that carries approvals between authorities, including bilateral validation paths, so each new market is a delta rather than a new program.
- Write the compliance arguments and residual risk positions for open items, deferred defects, and partially satisfied objectives, and defend them directly with authority staff and designees.
- Partner with the regulatory administration team to monitor emerging regulation and rulemaking, assess the design and requirements impact, and fold accepted requirements into the baseline before they block a market entry.
- Build the mechanisms that make this scale: requirements and traceability structures that carry jurisdiction tagging, reusable compliance matrix patterns, and plan templates that a second aircraft program can adopt.

About the team
This is a new organization within Prime Air to own the technical execution of certification to support our world-wide expansion focus in 2027 and beyond.

Basic qualifications

- Bachelor's degree
- 6+ years of systems design, software development, operations, automation, and process improvement experience
- Experience with requirements management and traceability tools (e.g., Jama, DOORS, or equivalent) for maintaining bidirectional traceability across a full softwarelifecycle
- Experience with ARP4754, ARP4761, DO-160, DO-178, or equivalent.
- Experience negotiating means of compliance directly with a civil aviation authority or its designees

Preferred qualifications

- 5+ years of aviation regulatory compliance experience
- Experience participating in or leading technical collaborations and creating alignment across diverse groups (e.g., hardware engineering, software engineering, program management)
- Experience establishing a certification basis for a novel product where existing airworthiness standards did not cleanly apply
- Experience with SORA approvals, including SAIL-based assurance levels, alongside traditional type certification bases
- Experience structuring a requirements baseline so one design satisfies divergent regulatory frameworks across a product family
- Experience obtaining or supporting approvals from two or more aviation authorities, and reusing evidence between them under a bilateral agreement

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 - 151,200.00 - 204,600.00 USD annually

How we rate this

Sr. Systems Development Engineer , Prime Air at Amazon rates 30 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.