Software Dev Manager, Amazon EMR

Amazon Elastic MapReduce (EMR) is AWS's cloud big data platform for running large-scale data processing workloads using open-source frameworks like Apache Spark, Hive, Trino, and Flink. EMR supports multiple deployment models — from fully serverless to customer-managed clusters — and processes petabytes of data daily for hundreds of thousands of active customers. Organizations across streaming, financial services, enterprise SaaS, and transportation rely on EMR's scale and performance for their most demanding analytics workloads.

We are looking for a Software Development Manager to lead one of the engineering teams within EMR's Workload Management organization. In this role, you will own the delivery, operational excellence, and talent development for a team building critical platform services — including workflow orchestration, interactive session management, identity and access control, or observability — that power every job and session across EMR's compute models. You will work closely with senior engineering leadership, Principal Engineers, and peer SDMs to execute against a multi-year platform roadmap while maintaining the highest bar for availability and customer experience.

This is a hands-on leadership role that requires strong technical judgment, a bias for action, and a passion for developing engineers. You will be expected to go deep on distributed systems trade-offs, drive execution on complex cross-team deliverables, and build a team culture rooted in ownership and operational excellence

Key job responsibilities
- Lead a team software engineers delivering platform services for EMR's workload management layer, including workflow orchestration, session management, authentication, or observability.

- Own end-to-end delivery for your team's roadmap — from design through launch — ensuring high-quality, on-time execution of features that directly impact customer experience.

- Drive operational excellence for your team's services, including availability, latency, and durability targets, oncall health, and proactive operational improvements.

- Partner with Principal Engineers and Sr. SDMs to translate architectural vision into executable plans, making sound technical trade-offs and ensuring your team delivers against the broader platform unification strategy.

- Hire, develop, and retain strong engineering talent — set clear expectations, deliver meaningful feedback, and create growth paths that help engineers reach their next level.

- Collaborate with Product Management to understand customer needs, prioritize the backlog, and ensure your team's work delivers measurable customer impact.

- Drive engineering best practices including code reviews, design reviews, testing strategies, and CI/CD pipeline improvements to raise the bar on engineering velocity and quality.

- Participate in cross-team operational forums, ensuring your team maintains a strong operational posture.

Basic Qualifications

- 3+ years of engineering team management experience
- 3+ years of working directly within engineering teams experience
- 5+ years of designing or architecting (design patterns, reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems experience
- 5+ years of leading the definition and development of multi tier web services experience
- Knowledge of engineering practices and patterns for the full software/hardware/networks development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, certification, and livesite operations
- Experience partnering with product or program management teams

Preferred Qualifications

- Experience in communicating with users, other technical teams, and senior leadership to collect requirements, describe software product features, technical designs, and product strategy
- Experience in recruiting, hiring, mentoring/coaching and managing teams of Software Engineers to improve their skills, and make them more effective, product software engineers

Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status, disability, or other legally protected status.

Los Angeles County applicants: Job duties for this position include: work safely and cooperatively with other employees, supervisors, and staff; adhere to standards of excellence despite stressful conditions; communicate effectively and respectfully with employees, supervisors, and staff to ensure exceptional customer service; and follow all federal, state, and local laws and Company policies. Criminal history may have a direct, adverse, and negative relationship with some of the material job duties of this position. These include the duties and responsibilities listed above, as well as the abilities to adhere to company policies, exercise sound judgment, effectively manage stress and work safely and respectfully with others, exhibit trustworthiness and professionalism, and safeguard business operations and the Company’s reputation. Pursuant to the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

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, CA, East Palo Alto - 212,700.00 - 287,700.00 USD annually