Level

AmazonPosted 1w ago

System Development Engineer, Keya

System Development Engineer, Keya at Amazon scores 0 out of 100 on AI centrality, which makes it AI Level 1 of 4 (Little AI) on this board. The level measures how much of the work is AI, not seniority.

US, CO, Denverfull-time$99k-$160k

AI in this role

Scale and operate customer experience services and automation tools for US government dedicated cloud partitions as a System Development Engineer.

linux
distributed-systemsautomationapi-debuggingcloud-computingsystems-engineering
Application deadline: Sep 27, 2026

The Keya team owns and operates the Customer Experience (CX) services that power AWS User Experience Products and Platforms (UXP2), Documentation, and SDKs within US Government dedicated cloud partitions. We are responsible for the scaling, reliability, and regional expansion of these services—ensuring that AWS's government customers have a seamless, secure, and performant experience across console, SDK, and documentation touchpoints.

The candidate selected must obtain and maintain a security clearance at the TS/SCI with polygraph level. Upon start, the selected candidate will be sponsored for a commensurate clearance for each government agency for which they perform AWS work.

Key job responsibilities
Our work spans the breadth of AWS: from build automation and service operations to development of tools that accelerate region launches and maintain experience parity across dedicated cloud environments.

Our work spans the breadth of AWS: from build automation and service operations to development of tools that accelerate region launches and maintain experience parity across dedicated cloud environments.

We are looking for a System Development Engineer to help us build, scale, and operate critical services that directly impact how US Government customers interact with AWS. You'll work on a collaborative, geographically distributed team that values autonomy, ownership, and technical depth.

A day in the life
No two days on Keya look the same—but here's what a typical day might look like:

You are a builder who thrives on solving real-world problems at scale. You're comfortable operating in ambiguity, you take ownership of outcomes (not just tasks), and you're energized by the challenge of keeping critical systems running reliably for customers who depend on them. You bring strong technical fundamentals, a bias for automation over manual work, and the curiosity to learn new systems quickly—because on Keya, you'll touch a lot of them.

You start your morning reviewing service dashboards and alarms, checking the health of the CX services your team owns across dedicated cloud partitions. After standup with your distributed team, you dive into a design document for a new automation that will cut a manual region-launch task from hours to minutes.

Mid-morning, you pair with a teammate to debug a latency spike in one of your APIs—tracing the issue across service boundaries, identifying a misconfigured retry policy, and pushing a fix through your CI/CD pipeline. After lunch, you join a cross-team architecture review with engineers from another AWS service team, providing input on how their changes will interact with your services in government partitions.

Later in the afternoon, you're writing code—maybe building a new CloudWatch alarm integration, extending an internal CLI tool, or implementing a feature on your team's roadmap. You wrap up the day by updating your design doc based on feedback from a senior engineer and queuing up a code review for tomorrow.

Basic qualifications

- Associate's degree or above, or CND (Certified Network Defender) or GSEC (GIAC Security Essentials)
- Experience programming with at least one modern language such as C++, C#, Java, Python, Golang, PowerShell, Ruby
- Experience tools for automation (building, testing, releasing or monitoring)

Preferred qualifications

- Bachelor's degree or above in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or other related discipline
- Knowledge of at least one modern programming language such as C, C++, Java, or Perl
- Experience coding, scripting, automating in at least one language (e.g., Python, C, C++, Java, Ruby, or PowerShell)
- Experience designing or architecting (design patterns, reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems

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, CO, Denver - 99,100.00 - 160,000.00 USD annually

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Skills and AI tools this role asks for

Distributed SystemsAutomationApi DebuggingCloud ComputingSystems EngineeringLinux

Questions you could be asked

  1. Tell me about a project where distributed systems was part of your work. What did you do?
  2. Tell me about a project where automation was part of your work. What did you do?
  3. Tell me about a project where api debugging was part of your work. What did you do?
  4. Tell me about a project where cloud computing was part of your work. What did you do?
  5. Tell me about a project where systems engineering was part of your work. What did you do?

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  • List these exact terms on your resume: Distributed Systems, Automation, Api Debugging, Cloud Computing, and Systems Engineering. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
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