Software Development Manager, AppSTAR COMPASS

Build a brand-new team to bring security review into the age of AI agents, at Amazon scale. You'll own the platform that automatically evaluates every code change tens of thousands of engineers ship, and clears the vast majority without a human ever touching it.

Security review has always been a bottleneck. A developer ships a change, waits for someone to look at it, and the security team drowns in a queue it can never fully clear. We're ending that tradeoff. Our engine evaluates changes as they happen, decides how much scrutiny each one actually needs, and handles the common case automatically with no wait for the developer, no queue for the reviewer.

The team is funded and forming now, and we're looking for the manager to build it. That means a clean slate on the architecture, your own hiring bar, and a stable of experienced security engineers backing your team with the risk expertise, so your engineers build instead of guessing at what matters. If you want to build AI-driven systems that make security invisible instead of painful, this is the seat.

Hire and lead a new team of software engineers and a technical program manager
Own an automated security assurance platform end to end, from architecture to production
Ship something measurable: fewer manual reviews, faster releases, no added burden on developers

Key job responsibilities
* Hire, build, and grow a new team of software engineers, setting the bar for technical quality and inclusive team culture from day one.

* Own the design and delivery of a platform that continuously evaluates code changes for security risk, routes the small fraction needing human attention, and automatically clears the rest.

* Work directly with the security engineers who handle escalated changes, building the queues, context, and tooling that make their reviews fast.

* Define the technical roadmap, make build-versus-integrate calls, and negotiate the interfaces with adjacent platform and telemetry teams your system depends on.

* Build the developer-facing experience: clear, trustworthy visibility into what was evaluated, what happened, and why, with as close to zero required action as possible.

* Establish the operational fundamentals: monitoring, calibration, on-call, and the feedback loops that keep automated decisions accurate as the code and the threat landscape change.

* Represent the team to senior leadership, and communicate progress, risk, and tradeoffs candidly.

A day in the life
You'll spend your morning with your engineers on architecture: how events flow through the pipeline, where the automated checks run, what happens when confidence drops. Midday you're with the security engineers discussing risk-ranking logic, working out what the platform needs to make their decisions real. Afternoons swing between interviews, unblocking a dependency with a partner team, and reviewing pilot data with your program manager. Some weeks you're deep in a design doc; others you're rebuilding a plan because the data told you something you didn't expect.

About the team
We're the team that decides how security attention gets spent. Our customers are the engineers shipping code every day and the security engineers reviewing it. Both are currently paying a tax we think is unnecessary. Our mission is to remove it: make security assurance automatic, proportional to real risk, and visible to the people it protects. We're a small group with an unusually direct line between the work and the outcome. We care about getting the decision right more than being the ones who make it, and we'd rather encode expertise into a mechanism than hoard it.

Diverse Experiences
Amazon Security 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 Amazon Security?
At Amazon, security is central to maintaining customer trust and delivering delightful customer experiences. Our organization is responsible for creating and maintaining a high bar for security across all of Amazon’s products and services. We offer talented security professionals the chance to accelerate their careers with opportunities to build experience in a wide variety of areas including cloud, devices, retail, entertainment, healthcare, operations, and physical stores.

Inclusive Team Culture
In Amazon Security, it’s in our nature to learn and be curious. Ongoing DEI events and learning experiences inspire us to continue learning and to embrace our uniqueness. Addressing the toughest security challenges requires that we seek out and celebrate a diversity of ideas, perspectives, and voices.

Training & 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, training, 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.

Basic Qualifications

- 3+ years of engineering team management experience
- 7+ years of engineering experience
- 8+ years of leading the definition and development of multi tier web services experience
- 1+ years of providing technical leadership and project management for all aspects of the software development lifecycle experience
- 1+ years of developing large-scale, multi-tiered distributed software systems using Java, C#, or C++ experience
- 1+ years of developing large-scale, multi-tiered distributed software systems using service-oriented architecture experience
- 1+ years of developing large-scale, multi-tiered distributed software systems using distributed programming experience
- 5+ years of Software Engineer, Software Developer, or related occupational experience
- Bachelor's degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field
- 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.

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, TX, Austin - 184,900.00 - 250,200.00 USD annually