Sr. Software Dev Engineer, Advanced Analytics at Amazon – Toronto

AI Summary

This Senior Software Development Engineer, Advanced Analytics role at Amazon in Toronto focuses on building foundational infrastructure for petabyte-scale log-level data. The position involves capturing, processing, storing, and analysing data to enhance advertising transparency and measurement for strategic customers. Key duties include empowering insights into auction competitiveness and optimising floor pricing. Candidates require at least five years of professional software development experience, including leading design or architecture initiatives.

About the Role and Team at Amazon Toronto

Amazon is actively seeking a highly skilled Senior Software Development Engineer to join its Advanced Analytics team in Toronto, Ontario. This pivotal role is embedded within a group dedicated to building sophisticated analytic solutions that cater to the measurement and intelligence requirements of Amazon's most strategic advertising partners. These partners encompass a diverse range, including holding companies, independent agencies, technology integrators, and large-scale advertisers. The team proudly owns and operates Amazon Ads' premier advanced analytics capability, delivering cutting-edge AI, modelling, and data solutions designed to empower customers to make smarter, faster, and more impactful advertising decisions.

In the dynamic and ever-evolving programmatic advertising industry, the demand for transparency has become increasingly critical. This is particularly true as the ecosystem expands, introducing multiple layers within the ad selling and buying supply chain. Log-level data, which represents granular, non-aggregated, event-level information sourced from ad servers, exchanges, and Supply-Side Platforms (SSPs), offers advertisers unprecedented visibility. This includes detailed insights into individual ad impressions, bid prices, viewability scores, and the entire supply path. The core mission of this role is to build the foundational infrastructure necessary to capture, process, store, and rigorously analyse this raw data at an immense petabyte scale. This critical work will empower the organisation to gain a profound understanding of auction competitiveness, identify lucrative revenue opportunities, optimise floor pricing strategies, and ultimately ensure comprehensive supply chain transparency for Amazon's largest advertising partners. The successful candidate will be instrumental in shaping the future of advertising measurement through innovative software development.

The ideal candidate for this Senior Software Development Engineer position is a creative and demonstrated leader possessing excellent analytical abilities and a strong, results-driven approach. They should exhibit a genuine passion for tackling complex technical challenges, feel comfortable operating effectively in ambiguous environments, and be genuinely excited by the opportunity to build foundational infrastructure. This infrastructure will power the next generation of advertising measurement and transparency solutions, requiring a deep understanding of data engineering principles and robust software design. This role demands deep technical expertise, strong problem-solving skills, and exceptional communication abilities to effectively collaborate across various teams. The incumbent will need to think strategically about system architecture while also being prepared to dive deep into implementation details, balancing competing priorities and making pragmatic trade-offs to maintain high standards for code quality and operational excellence.

Key Responsibilities and Technical Leadership in Data Engineering

As a Senior Software Development Engineer on the Log-Level Data team, the primary focus will be on the design and build of highly scalable, fault-tolerant data pipelines. These pipelines are essential for ingesting, processing, and storing petabyte-scale log-level advertising data, which originates from a multitude of sources including ad servers, exchanges, and SSPs. A significant aspect of this role involves architecting distributed systems that are capable of enabling both real-time and batch processing of granular event-level data, often with stringent sub-second latency requirements. This requires a deep understanding of distributed computing and high-performance data processing techniques.

Furthermore, the engineer will be responsible for developing robust data quality frameworks. These frameworks are crucial for validating, cleansing, and enriching raw log data, all while meticulously maintaining data lineage and comprehensive audit trails. Creating efficient storage solutions is another key responsibility, with an emphasis on optimising for both high-throughput writes and the execution of complex analytical queries across massive datasets. The role also involves the critical task of building APIs and data access layers. These interfaces are vital for enabling downstream analytics, advanced modelling, and various reporting applications to effectively leverage the rich log-level data.

Collaboration is a cornerstone of this position. The Senior Software Development Engineer will work closely with data scientists, product managers, and various business stakeholders. This collaborative effort is essential for translating complex transparency and measurement requirements into tangible, effective technical solutions. Establishing operational excellence practices is also paramount, including the implementation of sophisticated monitoring, alerting, and automated recovery mechanisms for mission-critical data infrastructure. Beyond technical contributions, this role carries significant leadership responsibilities. The successful candidate will mentor junior engineers, providing guidance and fostering their professional growth. They will also contribute substantially to the technical direction of the team through active participation in design reviews, thorough code reviews, and insightful architectural discussions, helping to build a strong engineering culture. This includes driving innovation in data processing techniques, continuously exploring emerging technologies and methodologies to improve system performance and overall capabilities. The comprehensive experience gained in this role will be invaluable for future career progression within Amazon's dynamic environment.

Essential Qualifications and Professional Development Opportunities

To excel in this Senior Software Development Engineer role at Amazon in Toronto, candidates must possess a strong foundation of professional experience in software development. Basic qualifications include a minimum of five years of non-internship professional software development experience. This must be complemented by at least five years of programming experience with at least one software programming language, demonstrating a solid command of coding principles and practices. Furthermore, candidates are required to have five years of experience leading the design or architecture (including design patterns, reliability, and scaling) of both new and existing systems, showcasing their ability to conceptualise and implement robust software solutions. Experience as a mentor, tech lead or leading an engineering team is also a fundamental requirement, highlighting leadership capabilities and the ability to guide and inspire others.

Preferred qualifications further enhance a candidate's profile for this challenging position. These include five or more years of experience across the full software development life cycle, encompassing coding standards, rigorous code reviews, proficient source control management, efficient build processes, comprehensive testing, and effective operations. A Bachelor's degree in computer science or an equivalent field is highly desirable, providing a strong theoretical underpinning for the practical application of software engineering principles. Experience with Machine Learning and Large Language Model fundamentals is also a significant asset, including an understanding of their architecture, training/inference lifecycles, and the optimisation of model execution. Alternatively, experience leading the architecture and design of new and current systems, focusing on architecture, design patterns, reliability, and scaling, is equally valued. Candidates with three or more years of experience building large-scale machine learning and AI solutions at internet scale will find their expertise particularly relevant to the advanced analytics work undertaken by the team. This role offers substantial opportunities for professional development, allowing engineers to deepen their technical expertise, refine their leadership skills, and contribute to cutting-edge advertising solutions within a global technology leader. The continuous learning environment and the chance to build impactful software solutions make this a compelling career opportunity.