Senior Principal Technologist

Who you are

• Deep expertise in AI/ML-driven applications, agentic architectures, cloud-native systems at production scale, and modern DevOps practices are highly applicable
• You must demonstrate exceptional written and verbal communication — your documents and presentations should serve as examples of highly effective communication that influence VP-level decision-making
• Experience designing, building, operating, and managing large-scale distributed systems or web services
• 15+ years of software engineering experience with increasing scope and complexity
• Experience as a recognized technical leader influencing architecture and strategy across organizational boundaries (multiple teams/orgs)
• Demonstrated track record of making architectural decisions with lasting organizational impact and bottom-line business consequences
• Experience serving as a trusted technical advisor to Director or VP-level leadership
• Experience driving cross-organizational alignment on complex technical challenges without direct authority
• Expert-level system design and architecture skills across multiple technology domains
• Demonstrated history of delivering solutions that fundamentally changed how an organization operates
• Experience architecting/operating solutions built on AWS at scale, or equivalent cloud platform expertise
• Experience developing, deploying, and managing AI/ML products at scale, including agentic architectures
• Recognized as a subject matter authority by both technical and business communities
• Track record of identifying technology trends and pioneering new technical spaces that created competitive advantage
• Experience mentoring Principal-level engineers and participating in senior promotion assessments
• Experience communicating technical strategy through Amazon-style narrative documents that influenced VP-level decisions
• Experience with competitive analysis and driving programs to address organizational technical weaknesses
• Published technical articles, conference presentations, or significant open source contributions
• Active AWS Certifications (Solutions Architect Professional, DevOps Engineer, or Machine Learning Specialty preferred)
• Experience leading cross-company technical initiatives with measurable business outcomes

What the job involves

• We are looking for a customer-obsessed Senior Principal Software Development Engineer to join our Engineering Services team
• As Amazon's most distinguished individual contributors, Senior Principal Engineers are forward-thinking technical leaders whose architectural decisions and strategic influence shape the direction of entire organizations
• In this role you will own the long-term technical strategy and architecture for the P&S Engineering Services portfolio — the cloud-native, production-ready software and infrastructure that our customers integrate into their own offerings — while simultaneously driving cross-organizational alignment on the most critical, ambiguous, and high-stakes technical challenges ProServe faces
• You will serve as a trusted technical advisor to Director and VP-level leadership, translating complex business goals into technology investments that yield measurable competitive advantage
• You will personally tackle the hardest unsolved problems — those that span multiple teams, require novel approaches, and carry significant business risk
• The ideal candidate is recognized as "one of the best" among their peer group: a pragmatic engineer who combines exceptional technical depth with the breadth to influence architecture, strategy, and engineering culture across organizational boundaries
• As members of AWS Professional Services, we are not stewards of a single AWS service but of the entire AWS platform — keeping abreast of the ever-widening stream of platform improvements and new services
• You will pioneer new technical spaces, evolve critical legacy systems, and lead cross-company technical initiatives that fundamentally change how ProServe delivers value at scale
• Own the multi-year technical vision and architecture strategy for the P&S Engineering Services portfolio, mapping business goals to technology investments with bottom-line impact on the business
• Serve as trusted technical advisor to Director/VP leadership; influence planning strategy, set objectives that yield competitive advantage, and drive awareness of the impact and consequences of technology decisions on the business
• Lead the most advanced, difficult, cross-cutting, and ambiguous technical challenges spanning across the organization — including evolving critical systems, pioneering new technical spaces, and leading cross-company initiatives
• Align teams, organizations, and architectures to a coherent technical vision; ensure that multiple teams are delivering systems that fit well together and are focused on the highest-impact work
• Personally design and build the most critical systems; make game-changing architectural choices combining unique technical expertise with deep business judgment; know when to apply incremental approaches vs. recommend major refactoring efforts
• Drive cross-organizational alignment (up to VP level) on one-way-door architectural decisions with lasting consequences — influencing without direct authority across multiple organizations
• Establish and embody the standard for engineering excellence across the organization — code quality, observability, security, availability, operational excellence — holding peers and teams to a high bar
• Amplify impact through the broader technical community: educate on advanced technical issues, present at internal conferences, keep the organization up-to-date on technology trends and competitive positioning
• Actively mentor Principal Engineers toward Senior Principal-level impact; participate in Principal promotion assessments, performance discussions, and career growth guidance across the company
• Identify future skills needed across the organization and advocate for development/acquisition of those skills to senior leaders; scout and recruit top talent to Amazon
• Develop and institutionalize best practices; serve as a role model for Principal Engineer Tenets; drive adoption of emerging technologies (AI/ML, agentic architectures) where they create competitive advantage
• Communicate technical vision with exceptional clarity in writing for audiences from engineers to VP-level leadership; produce documents and presentations referred to as examples of highly effective communication
• Obtain/maintain AWS Certifications; occasional travel to customer sites (~20%)
• AWS Professional Services Product & Solutions (P&S) builds and operates AI-enhanced software solutions that transform ProServe from traditional project-based consulting to product-led, outcome-based delivery
• We productize ProServe's expertise into scalable, repeatable solutions that accelerate customer GenAI, cloud, and industry transformation — reducing complexity, improving time-to-value, and driving delivery efficiency across the customer's cloud journey