Senior System Engineer

Would you like to help implement innovative cloud computing solutions and solve the most complex technical problems? Are you excited by the prospect of building and running the world's largest cloud computing infrastructure to provide a better world for future generations? Amazon Web Services (AWS) builds and operates some of the largest internet infrastructure on the planet, providing companies of all sizes with an infrastructure web services platform in the cloud. With AWS, customers provision compute power, storage, database, and other cloud resources as their business demands them. To meet the growing demand for AWS Services around the globe, we need exceptionally motivated people who are driven by learning and innovation.

AWS Utility Computing (UC) provides product innovations from foundational services such as Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), to consistently released new product innovations that continue to set AWS's services and features apart in the industry. As a member of the UC organization, you'll support the development and management of Compute, Database, Storage, Internet of Things (IoT), Platform, and Productivity Apps services in AWS, including support for customers who require specialized security solutions for their cloud services.

Key job responsibilities

Amazon has a collaborative, purposeful and enthusiastic environment where we 'Work Hard, Have Fun, Make History'. On a typical day engineers might dive deep into understanding the root cause of a customer issue, investigate why a metric is trending the wrong way and consult with the top engineers at Amazon. We own our services and believe in making out-of-hours support as painless as possible. To achieve this, we implement Operational Excellence best practices and strive to automate manual processes.

Our Senior Systems Engineers are considered technical leaders for their team and become subject matter experts in multiple services. They work efficiently and routinely deliver the right things with limited guidance. They use technology to solve complex problems. They are able to improve and/or drive improvements to these services and features for their team. They understand how their work impacts multiple teams. They are able to take a project, when the problem is not defined and deliver on schedule, applying appropriate technologies and industry systems-engineering best practices. They make effective implementation trade-off decisions and are able to assist others with trade-off decisions.

Our Senior Systems Engineers identify when implementations are not highly available, performant, secure, stable, maintainable, or have defects; and are able to determine short- and long-term mitigations. They have a depth and breadth of understanding in multiple areas of technology and they are excellent diagnosticians. They utilize their Linux expertise to troubleshoot, innovate fixes and workarounds, keep software up-to-date and provide data and metrics that help manage the capacity and efficiency of services.

Our Senior Systems Engineers are able to lead team design, scoping, and prioritization discussions. They understand how technical decisions impact their team, and other teams' services and recommend opportunities and solutions for these problems. They optimize and/or automate team processes, ensuring they meet organization goals. They lead implementation reviews (e.g., designs, code, operational readiness, deployment plans, system changes, etc.). They anticipate and mitigate patterns that affect the performance, reliability, or availability of their team(s) systems to create automation that simplifies workloads that scale operations.

Our Senior Systems Engineers drive SOP, documentation, and runbook creation, reviewing them for accuracy; they drive the use of best practices. They actively recruit and interview for their team and help others leverage their own expertise, by coaching and mentoring. They communicate clearly and collaborate with others to deliver results. They are self-starters, comfortable dealing with ambiguity and change. They are customer-obsessed, always looking to understand customer pain points and find resolutions quickly and completely.

About the team

AWS 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.

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.

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.

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.

Basic Qualifications

• Advanced knowledge in Linux system administration
• Significant experience of systems automation using BASH, Python, Perl, etc.
• Significant experience of network fundamentals (DNS, DHCP, TCP/IP, routing, switching, HTTP)
• Excellent troubleshooting skills at all levels, from application to network to host
• Experience writing technical documents, project plans and progress reports to leadership and to stakeholders

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience of building and operating systems at scale
• Advanced knowledge of configuration management systems, such as: Puppet, Chef, Ansible, or related systems
• Significant experience of monitoring frameworks (such as CloudWatch, Datadog, Grafana, Elastic or similar)