System Development Engineer, AWS Region Reliability (Greyjoy)

I can see your requisition form for the SysDE III role on the Greyjoy team. Based on what I know about your team, the role requirements, and the form's guidance, here's a draft Job Summary for your review:

Are you passionate about building resilient infrastructure at massive scale? The AWS Region Reliability Engineering (RRE) Greyjoy team is looking for a Systems Development Engineer III to help ensure the availability and reliability of Amazon Dedicated Cloud (ADC) isolated regions that serve some of our most critical customers.

As a SysDE III on the Greyjoy team, you will design, build, and operate automation and tooling that keeps cloud infrastructure running at peak performance. You will own and drive solutions across the full development lifecycle, from identifying operational pain points to deploying production-ready systems that reduce toil and improve reliability. You will collaborate closely with commercial service teams and cross-functional partners to resolve complex infrastructure challenges, lead host maintenance and deployment workflows, and contribute to credential rotation, resource synthesis, and incident response efforts.

We are looking for an engineer who thrives in ambiguity, takes ownership of hard problems, and delivers results that directly impact the operational health of AWS regions. You will have the opportunity to mentor junior engineers, influence team best practices, and shape the future of how we operate and scale reliability engineering across ADC.

Key highlights of this role:

Architect and deliver automation that reduces operational toil across multiple ADC workflows
Lead reliability improvements for cloud infrastructure supporting mission-critical government and enterprise workloads
Partner with service teams to drive root cause analysis, operational excellence, and continuous improvement
Operate in a Linux/Unix environment and work with modern programming languages such as Python, Java, and Ruby
Grow your career on a team that values ownership, innovation, and engineering excellence

This position requires that the candidate selected must currently possess and maintain an active TS/SCI security clearance with polygraph. The position further requires the candidate to opt into a commensurate clearance for each government agency for which they perform AWS work.

Key job responsibilities
- Design, develop, and maintain automation tooling that improves operational efficiency across ADC isolated region workflows, including host maintenance, deployments, credential rotation, and resource synthesis
- Own and operate production systems end-to-end, from development through deployment, monitoring, and incident response in a Linux/Unix environment
- Lead root cause analysis for high-severity operational events and drive corrective actions that improve system reliability and reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR)
- Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation to support safe, repeatable changes across cloud infrastructure
- Develop scripts, tools, and services using languages such as Python, Java, Ruby, or Golang to reduce manual toil and scale operational processes
- Collaborate with cross-functional service teams to identify reliability gaps and deliver solutions that meet or exceed operational SLAs
- Mentor and guide junior engineers through code reviews, design discussions, and engineering best practices
- Contribute to operational excellence initiatives by creating runbooks, improving monitoring and alerting, and driving process improvements across the team
- Participate in on-call rotations and respond to operational events to maintain the availability of critical AWS infrastructure

A day in the life
You start each day reviewing operational dashboards and triaging incoming tickets across host maintenance, deployments, credential rotation, and resource synthesis workflows. You prioritize high-severity issues affecting Amazon Dedicated Cloud (ADC) regional availability. Mid-day, you write automation in Python or Java, push code through CI/CD pipelines, and review teammates' designs. You collaborate with service teams on reliability improvements and dive into root cause analysis for operational events. You wrap up by updating tracking tools and preparing handoff notes for the on-call engineer. Every day focuses on making ADC infrastructure more reliable and automated.

About the team
The Greyjoy team is part of AWS Region Reliability Engineering (RRE). We maintain the operational health and availability of Amazon Dedicated Cloud (ADC) isolated regions. Our engineers build and operate automation across critical workflows including host maintenance, deployments, credential rotation, resource synthesis, and incident response. We partner with commercial service teams to drive reliability improvements, reduce operational toil, and lower mean time to resolution for our customers. We value ownership, collaboration, and engineering excellence in a fast-paced environment where every engineer makes a direct impact on AWS's most critical infrastructure.

Basic Qualifications

- Bachelor's degree, or CSSLP (Certified Secure Software Lifecycle Professional)
- 3+ years of programming with at least one modern language such as C++, C#, Java, Python, Golang, PowerShell, Ruby experience
- 4+ years of non-internship professional software development experience
- 2+ years of designing or architecting (design patterns, reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems experience
- 4+ years of systems development in an IT or data center environment experience
- 4+ years of deploying and operating in a Linux/Unix environment experience
- 2+ years of systems design, software development, operations, automation, and process improvement experience
- Experience leading the design, build and deployment of complex and performant (reliable and scalable) software solutions in production
- Current, active US Government Security Clearance of TS/SCI with Polygraph

Preferred Qualifications

- 1+ years of development/programming/scripting language (Python/Java/Bash/Perl) 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 taking a leading role in building complex software or computing infrastructure that has been successfully delivered to customers

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 - 151,200.00 - 204,600.00 USD annually