Senior Software Development Engineer

Amazon - Senior Software Development Engineer
Usually recognized as Team/Technical Leader, Senior Software Engineers Solves big problems that come with a lot of ambiguity. As technical leaders of the team, Sr SDE’s work efficiently and regularly deliver the right things with limited guidance. They take a long term view of team’s software and how it fits into the architecture; fix architecture deficiencies and/or propose larger projects, which may require the work of rest of the team. They understand the business impact of systems and show good judgment when making technical trade-offs between team’s short-term technology or operational needs and longterm business needs. As a key influencer in team strategy, Sr SDE’s drive mindful discussions with customers and peers. They bring perspective and provide context for current technology choices and guide future technology choices.

Sr SDE’s take ownership of team architecture, providing a system-wide view and design guidance. They drive engineering best practices (e.g., Operational Excellence, Security, Quality, etc.) and set standards. They work to resolve the root cause of endemic problems which may require them to influence software decisions made by other teams. When confronted with discordant views, they are able to find the best way forward and influence others to follow that path (build consensus). They actively contribute in recruiting and help others leverage their expertise, by coaching and mentoring in organization or at their locations. They provide technical assessments for promotions in SDE job family.

As a norm, Amazon SDE’s have industry-leading technical abilities. They recognize and adopt best practices in software engineering: design, testing, version control, documentation, build, deployment, and operations. They write high quality, maintainable, and robust code, often in Java or C++. They solve problems at their root, stepping back to understand the broader context. They build flexible systems without over-engineering and choose simple, straightforward solutions over more complex ones. They understand a broad range of data structures and algorithms and know how, when and when not to use them; recognize and use design patterns to solve business problems. They understand how operating systems work, perform and scale. Sr SDE’s write software that is easy for others to contribute to.

Amazon SDE’s build software for business’ sake, not for technology’s sake. They have an understanding and empathy for Amazon’s customers and business objectives, particularly those aspects relevant to their teams and divisions. They work in a team, driving things forward, they collaborate to ensure that decisions are based on the merit of the proposal, not the proposer.

Key Responsibilities include: -  Ability to architect and design right solutions starting with broadly defined problems  Provide technical mentorship/leadership to other engineers  Drive best practices and engineering excellence  Development of code in object oriented languages like Java and C++.

Preferred Qualifications  The ability to take raw product requirements and develop software architectures and designs to bring them to life.  10+ years of experience building successful production software systems  A solid grounding in Computer Science fundamentals (based on a BS or MS in CS or related field). Post-graduate degree: Master’s or Ph.D. with focus in machine learning is big plus.  Development in cloud environment  Mastery of the tools of the trade, including a variety of modern programming languages (Java/C++/C#, JavaScript, C/C++,Python) and open-source technologies (Linux, Spring, Hibernate)