Sr Software Development Engineer, Agent Platforms & Services

DESCRIPTION

Define how AI agents operate in one of the world's largest advertising ecosystems — owning the architecture for agent orchestration, reinforcement learning from expert feedback, trust and permission systems, and scalable inference infrastructure that powers intelligent advertising decisions across Amazon Ads. This is a greenfield opportunity to give every advertiser, regardless of size or sophistication, access to the caliber of strategic campaign management previously available only through dedicated agencies.

Our team is developing an agent platform that coordinates multiple specialized AI sub-agents to execute complex, multi-step advertising workflows. You'll own the architectural direction for these systems, partner with Applied Scientists on learning systems, drive technical strategy with product teams on advertiser experience, and build the identity and authorization frameworks that keep it all secure. This is a small, high-ownership team where you'll shape how AI transforms advertising from the ground floor — influencing technical direction beyond your own team and establishing the engineering practices that scale as the platform grows.

Key job responsibilities

• Own the architectural direction for orchestration systems that coordinate multiple specialized AI sub-agents to execute complex, multi-step advertising workflows
• Design and build identity, authorization, and permission frameworks that enforce scoped access for diverse caller types — making foundational technical decisions that shape the platform long-term
• Design feedback signal pipelines that capture expert judgment and route it into model improvement loops
• Partner with Applied Scientists to integrate reinforcement learning from human expert feedback into production agent systems, driving the technical strategy for how learning systems evolve
• Design and operate end-to-end evaluation systems that measure recommendation quality, detect regressions, and enforce quality gates
• Establish and drive technical partnerships with cross-functional teams (product, science, partner engineering) to define integration contracts and onboard new consumers to the platform, influencing their technical direction
• Own system reliability, observability, and performance for always-on agent infrastructure serving thousands of concurrent advertiser accounts
• Mentor engineers, lead design reviews, and drive adoption of engineering best practices across the team

A day in the life
You might start the morning reviewing eval results from a newly onboarded agent skill, diagnosing why routing accuracy dropped 2%. By mid-morning, you're pairing with an Applied Scientist to tune the feedback pipeline that captures expert signals. After lunch, you're designing the permission model for a new integration. You end the day shipping an observability improvement that surfaces latency bottlenecks across the orchestration chain. Every day is different, but the thread is the same: making AI agents smarter, safer, and more reliable at scale.

About the team
We're a small, high-ownership team within Amazon Ads building the platform that makes AI agents accessible across the advertising ecosystem. Our charter is greenfield: we're defining how agent intelligence gets exposed to other engineering teams. We work closely with Applied Scientists on learning systems, product teams on advertiser experience, and platform teams on shared infrastructure. The team values builders who ship fast, think in systems, and are comfortable operating in ambiguity. If you want to shape how AI transforms advertising from the ground floor, this is the team.

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS

• 5+ years of non-internship professional software development experience
• 5+ years of programming with at least one software programming language experience
• 5+ years of leading design or architecture (design patterns, reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems experience
• Experience as a mentor, tech lead or leading an engineering team

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• 5+ years of full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, and operations experience
• Bachelor's degree in computer science or equivalent

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 - 168,100.00 - 227,400.00 USD annually