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Prime Air is Amazon's drone delivery program, working to safely deliver packages to customers in under an hour. The Data for Autonomous Aircraft (DA2) team within Prime Air designs, develops, and operates prototype platforms that provide high-quality data to develop and validate features for commercial autonomous flight operations.
We are seeking an experienced Lead Engineer to serve as the senior technical authority for the DA2 engineering team. This role requires a versatile engineer who can work fluidly across engineering domains - software, electrical, hardware, mechanical, and systems integration - with particular depth in hardware-software integration for complex sensor payloads. Our greatest technical challenges lie at the intersection of embedded software and deployed hardware: ensuring our software performs reliably on the multi-sensor payloads we design, build, and fly in real-world environments.
The ideal candidate brings at least 10 years of engineering experience, preferably in aerospace, robotics, or autonomous systems, and combines deep technical expertise with the ability to lead through ambiguity. You must have an excellent understanding of software development best practices, modern development flows (CI/CD, version control, automated testing), and how to integrate AI tools and techniques into engineering workflows to accelerate development velocity and improve quality. You will be the engineering team's senior technical voice - setting the bar for quality, driving root cause resolution of the most complex system defects, and charting the technical roadmap that enables DA2 to deliver on Prime Air's mission.
Key job responsibilities
Technical Roadmap & Quality Ownership: Create and maintain the DA2 engineering roadmap, balancing defect resolution and operational reliability with long-term platform development. Own the technical quality of all team deliverables across hardware, software, and systems integration - establishing engineering standards, design review rigor, and quality gates that ensure platforms produce reliable, high-quality data.
Root Cause & Complex Problem Resolution: Own the RCCA process for system defects. Serve as the escalation point for the most complex cross-domain challenges spanning embedded software, sensor hardware, data pipelines, and system integration.
Hardware-Software Integration & AI Modernization: Drive integration strategy ensuring software operates reliably on deployed payload hardware. Lead resolution of interface issues across camera systems, navigation units, radar, and onboard processing. Champion AI tools and techniques in engineering workflows to improve velocity and effectiveness.
Cross-Functional Leadership & Mentorship: Represent DA2 engineering in technical forums, design reviews, trade studies, and leadership discussions across Prime Air. Collaborate with partner teams to align priorities with program objectives. Mentor engineers across disciplines and foster a culture of rigorous engineering practice.
A day in the life
You'll start your day reviewing collection data quality, triaging defects, and prioritizing engineering response. You might lead a design review for a next-generation sensor payload, then dive into a cross-domain root cause investigation systems development, software engineers, and hardware engineers. Throughout, you're mentoring engineers, challenging assumptions, and making the call between tactical fixes and systemic solutions - always keeping platform reliability and data quality at the center.
About the team
DA2 is Prime Air's prototyping and data gathering group - designing, building, and operating custom sensor platforms that collect the real-world data needed to validate and advance algorithms for Amazon's autonomous delivery drone. The team moves fast, iterating on hardware and software to enable next-generation capabilities. As Lead Engineer, you'll provide senior technical leadership across the full engineering lifecycle - from early-stage prototyping through field deployment and operational support.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
- Experience leading the design, automation, deployment, and support of large-scale infrastructure
- Experience programming with at least one modern language such as Python, Ruby, Golang, Java, C++, C#, Rust
- Experience with Linux/Unix
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines build processes
- 10+ years of engineering experience
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Experience with distributed systems at scale
- Experience (non-internship) in professional software development
- Experience writing technical documents, project plans and progress reports to leadership and to stakeholders
- Experience designing or architecting (design patterns, reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems
- Experience building tools for building, testing, releasing or monitoring
- Experience in mentoring, leading, or managing more junior 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, WA, Seattle - 151,200.00 - 204,600.00 USD annually