Software Development Engineer, Amazon DynamoDB

Description

Senior Software Development Engineer, Amazon DynamoDB
Location: Dublin, Ireland

Want to shape the future of a NoSQL database service that supports mission-critical workloads operating at more than 200 million requests per second? Amazon DynamoDB is a key-value and document database that delivers single-digit-millisecond performance at any scale. As a fast-growing service at the core of the AWS Cloud, our business and engineering decisions have widespread impact across AWS, Amazon, and beyond. Many of the world's fastest-growing businesses depend on the scale and performance of DynamoDB to support their mission-critical workloads.

We are looking for a Senior Software Development Engineer eager to improve the discoverability, safety, and efficiency of DynamoDB. In this role, you will help lead us on a journey toward a next-generation cloud database that takes advantage of the latest hardware advancements to deliver amazing performance at an attractive price point. You will design and operate reliable, highly scalable distributed systems, set technical direction for complex initiatives, and raise the operational bar for a service with the highest availability and durability requirements. This is a rare opportunity to tackle distributed-systems challenges at a scale and level of impact seen in very few places in the world.

Amazon DynamoDB is part of AWS Utility Computing (UC), which provides product innovations — from foundational services such as Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), to consistently released new product innovations that continue to set AWS's services and features apart in the industry. As a member of the UC organization, you'll support the development and management of Compute, Database, Storage, Internet of Things (IoT), Platform, and Productivity Apps services in AWS. Within AWS UC, Amazon Dedicated Cloud (ADC) roles engage with AWS customers who require specialized security solutions for their cloud services.

Key job responsibilities
Design and implement highly available, horizontally scalable distributed systems that store and serve customer data with strict durability and latency guarantees;
Own the technical design of large features and multi-quarter initiatives, decomposing ambiguous problems into deliverable plans for the team;
Solve hard distributed-systems challenges around replication, consistency, partitioning, reliability, security, and performance for a service running at massive scale;
Drive operational excellence for a tier-1 service — define best practices, improve observability, eliminate root causes of operational pain, and participate in the on-call rotation;
Perform data analysis to identify opportunities to optimize our services for performance and cost;
Lead design and code reviews and set technical best practices for the engineering team;
Mentor SDE Is and SDE IIs through code reviews, design guidance, and pair programming;
Maintain current technical knowledge to support rapidly changing technology, and work with the team to bring in new technologies when appropriate.
A day in the life
You might start the day with a design review for a new feature: a next-generation replication path for multi-region tables. You whiteboard trade-offs between consistency guarantees and throughput, debating how to minimize impact during failover. Later, you pair with a teammate to debug a race condition in the storage layer that surfaces only under high concurrency, then dig into operational metrics to pre-empt a scaling bottleneck before it reaches customers. You balance hands-on coding with the technical leadership that keeps a global service running reliably.

About the team
You'll join a team of curious, driven engineers who believe that technical excellence and world-class reliability are not aspirations — they are the baseline our customers deserve. If you want to build something that matters, alongside people who challenge and inspire you, this is the place. This is a rare opportunity to design and operate systems at true cloud scale while developing deep expertise in distributed systems and database technologies.

Diverse Experiences. AWS values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the 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. AWS values curiosity and connection. Our employee-led and company-sponsored affinity groups promote inclusion and empower our people to take pride in what makes us unique. Our inclusion events foster stronger, more collaborative teams. Our continual innovation is fueled by the bold ideas, fresh perspectives, and passionate voices our teams bring to everything we do.

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 flexible work hours and arrangements are part of our culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there's nothing we can't achieve in the cloud.

Basic Qualifications

- Experience as a mentor, tech lead or leading an engineering team
- Experience leading the architecture and design (architecture, design patterns, reliability and scaling) of new and current systems
- Experience in professional, non-internship software development
- Experience programming with at least one modern language such as Java, C++, or C# including object-oriented design
- Experience in development in the last 3 years

Preferred Qualifications

- Bachelor's degree in computer science or equivalent
- Experience with full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, and operations

Amazon is an equal opportunities employer. We believe passionately that employing a diverse workforce is central to our success. We make recruiting decisions based on your experience and skills. We value your passion to discover, invent, simplify and build. Protecting your privacy and the security of your data is a longstanding top priority for Amazon. Please consult our Privacy Notice ( https://www.amazon.jobs/en/privacy_page ) to know more about how we collect, use and transfer the personal data of our candidates.

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.