Sr. Systems Development Engineer, Region Services

Description

Applicants must be Australian citizens and hold or be eligible to obtain an Australian Government Security Clearance with the ability to successfully complete an Organisational Suitability Assessment. For more information regarding security clearances please visit (https://www.agsva.gov.au/).

The AWS Region Services team combines AWS global cloud leadership with Australian security expertise to deliver highly secure, scalable environments for sensitive workloads. We’re creating innovative ways to use cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and machine learning while maintaining the highest standards of security and operational excellence.

The Engineering organisation within Region Services is structured across core capability pillars: Compute & Machine Learning, Security Identity & Compliance, Storage & Databases, and a growing capability domain. Collectively these pillars encompass a team of varying technical skillsets, including Engineers; Technical Program Managers and Subject Matter Experts, organised into focused sub-teams.

This is an opportunity to make a lasting impact on Australia’s digital future. You’ll work with AWS services, implement innovative solutions, and help customers succeed in their most important missions. We’re committed to helping our builders grow through continuous learning, mentoring, and collaboration with industry experts. Are you ready to build the future of secure cloud computing in Australia?

Key job responsibilities
You'll be the engineer who keeps one of the world's largest cloud providers running while simultaneously making it better. Your dual mandate — operational excellence today and engineering innovation for tomorrow — means no two weeks look the same.

You'll own the health and reliability of critical AWS software systems, responding to operational events with the calm precision of someone who understands the architecture end-to-end. But you won't stop at firefighting. You'll identify patterns in operational burden and engineer them away, building automation and tooling that gives your team back hours, days, and weeks.

Your responsibilities will span the full lifecycle of complex distributed systems. You'll design and implement solutions that reduce operational toil at scale, turning manual processes into self-healing, automated workflows. You'll dive deep into unfamiliar technologies — because in this environment, breadth of knowledge is as valuable as depth — and emerge with insights that drive meaningful improvements.

You'll collaborate across capability pillars, bringing your systems expertise to bear on challenges in compute, security, storage, and beyond. You'll mentor fellow engineers, contribute to architectural decisions that shape the programme's future, and champion operational best practices that raise the bar for the entire team.

When incidents arise, you'll lead with clarity and purpose. When the dust settles, you'll lead the retrospective that ensures the same issue never surfaces again.

A day in the life
Your morning begins with a quick scan of system health dashboards — the overnight metrics tell a story, and you're fluent in reading it. A minor anomaly catches your eye; you investigate, trace it to a configuration drift, and push a fix before it becomes a customer-impacting event. That's the kind of proactive engineering that defines your approach.

By mid-morning, you're deep in code. The automation framework you've been building is nearly ready — once deployed, it will eliminate a manual runbook that currently consumes hours of engineering time each week. You push your latest changes, kick off the test suite, and switch context.

After lunch, you join a cross-pillar design review. A colleague from the Security Identity & Compliance team is proposing a new approach to credential rotation at scale. You ask the questions that sharpen the design, offer an alternative pattern you've seen work in distributed systems, and volunteer to prototype a component.

Later in the afternoon, you pair with a newer team member who's working through their first operational deep-dive. You guide them through the investigative process — how to read the signals, where to look next, when to escalate — passing on the craft of systems thinking.

Before you wrap up, you update your team's engineering backlog with a new item: a pattern you noticed this morning that could be automated. Tomorrow, or next sprint, that idea becomes reality. Every day, the system gets a little better because you were here.

About the team
The Region Services team redefines the way AWS designs, builds, and operates AWS regions to enable new AWS Cloud Infrastructure and Services offerings to customers across every industry and of every size, including start-ups, enterprises, and public sector organizations.

About the team
The Region Services team redefines the way AWS designs, builds, and operates AWS regions to enable new AWS Cloud Infrastructure and Services offerings to customers across every industry and of every size, including start-ups, enterprises, and public sector organizations.

Diverse Experiences
Amazon values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the preferred 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 AWS
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. We pioneered cloud computing and never stopped innovating — that’s why customers from the most successful startups to Global 500 companies trust our robust suite of products and services to power their businesses.

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 we strive for flexibility as part of our working culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve in the cloud.

Inclusive Team Culture
AWS values curiosity and connection. Our employee-led and company-sponsored affinity groups promote inclusion and empower our people to take pride in what makes us unique. Our inclusion events foster stronger, more collaborative teams. Our continual innovation is fueled by the bold ideas, fresh perspectives, and passionate voices our teams bring to everything we do.

Mentorship and 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, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional.

Basic Qualifications

- 5+ years of deploying and operating in a Linux/Unix environment experience
- 5+ years of systems development in an IT or data center environment experience
- 3+ years of systems design, software development, operations, automation, and process improvement experience
- 3+ years of programming with at least one modern language such as C++, C#, Java, Python, Golang, PowerShell, Ruby experience
- Experience leading the design, build and deployment of complex and performant (reliable and scalable) software solutions in production

Preferred Qualifications

- Experience with distributed systems at scale
- Experience in mentoring, leading, or managing more junior engineers

Acknowledgement of country:
In the spirit of reconciliation Amazon acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.

IDE statement:
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.