Software Development Engineer, Alexa Audio Playback Experience
DESCRIPTION
Want to transform the way people enjoy video, music, radio and books? Come join the team that made Prime Music, Spotify, Pandora, Live radio, Audible books, Kindle books, Podcasts, Alexa on Fire TV and more available to Alexa customers. We are innovating on and changing the way our customers interact with media services and devices!
On the Alexa Entertainment Team, you will have an enormous opportunity to impact the customer experience, design, architecture, and implementation of cutting edge products that will be used every day by people you know. No matter what the role, we’re looking for people who are passionate about innovating on behalf of customers, demonstrate a high degree of product ownership, and want to have fun while they make history.
In this role you’ll have independent technical ownership on new customer features and supporting architecture on a day to day and week to week basis. You’ll learn new in-demand skills like building voice control interfaces and scalable API platforms interfacing with Generative AI that will be highly valuable as you grow your career at Amazon and beyond. You’ll work directly with Product Management and Design to refine the customer experience for Alexa entertainment featured products. You’ll join a unique team in the Alexa organization with our own culture – we move fast to deliver new great features for customers and have a ton of fun doing it.
Come join us as we build the Voice OS for Entertainment in the home using cutting edge technologies. We’re breaking new ground and need your help to bring our vision to reality.
Key job responsibilities
A person in this role is expected to:
1. Design, implement, and deliver software in ambiguous and complex problem spaces of Alexa Audio working with partners such as product managers, technical program managers, and senior/principal engineers to deliver on the business goals related to Audio Playback Experience.
2. Create infrastructure to bring the power of LLMs into the Audio space while championing best practices for software engineering and operational excellence.
3. Create tools and software to evaluate, analyze, and improve the model accuracy for various Audio experiences, while staying neutral on latency and friction.
4. Influence the operational and engineering excellence roadmap across core audio services set by the lead SDEs to proactively address peak readiness, hardware efficiency, scaling, throttling and improve availability & resiliency for Alexa Audio Services.
5. Provide valuable design feedback around latency considerations, two-way door decisions and valuable coding feedback around coding standards, quality, versioning to both internal and external away teams, guide them on best practices for developing within APEX owned services and push back on proposals which do not adhere to our high quality standards.
6. Mentor junior members of the team and help them onboard. They participate in interviews and hiring efforts for the team, and constantly share knowledge of components they own and have expert knowledge of through mediums such as demos, brownbags and org-wide emails.
7. Leadership principles that are most important for this role are ownership, deliver results, deep dive, bias for action, hire & develop the best, and earns trust.
A day in the life
We collaborate across disciplines. You will have the opportunity to work closely with product managers, UX designers and researchers, and business intelligence engineers to innovate, measure, analyze and refine the experiences we deliver to millions of customers across the planet on a daily basis. Our roles are all well defined, but we encourage individuals to cross boundaries and learn from each other.
About the team
Alexa Audio Playback Experience (APEX) team focuses on delivering world-class listening experiences. Our North star vision is “to be a listener’s preferred audio choice by becoming their trusted curator; helping them to experience the right audio content at the right moment that entertains, inspires, and/or informs – every day, everywhere, on every headless, screened, or wearable Alexa-enabled device, from all the world’s creators, developers and services”. We seek to address all the moments a listener has, with perfectly tailored audio experiences that enrich their lives. This role is an L5 software development engineer for APEX Gateway team, which covers the infrastructure and service between the LLM and other backend services.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
- 3+ years of non-internship professional software development experience
- 2+ years of non-internship design or architecture (design patterns, reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems experience
- Experience programming with at least one software programming language
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- 3+ years of full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, and operations experience
- Bachelor's degree in computer science or equivalent
Amazon is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or other legally protected status. For individuals with disabilities who would like to request an accommodation, please visit https://www.amazon.jobs/en/disability/us.
Los Angeles County applicants: Job duties for this position include: work safely and cooperatively with other employees, supervisors, and staff; adhere to standards of excellence despite stressful conditions; communicate effectively and respectfully with employees, supervisors, and staff to ensure exceptional customer service; and follow all federal, state, and local laws and Company policies. Criminal history may have a direct, adverse, and negative relationship with some of the material job duties of this position. These include the duties and responsibilities listed above, as well as the abilities to adhere to company policies, exercise sound judgment, effectively manage stress and work safely and respectfully with others, exhibit trustworthiness and professionalism, and safeguard business operations and the Company’s reputation. Pursuant to the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
Our compensation reflects the cost of labor across several US geographic markets. The base pay for this position ranges from $129,300/year in our lowest geographic market up to $223,600/year in our highest geographic market. Pay is based on a number of factors including market location and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Amazon is a total compensation company. Dependent on the position offered, equity, sign-on payments, and other forms of compensation may be provided as part of a total compensation package, in addition to a full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits. For more information, please visit https://www.aboutamazon.com/workplace/employee-benefits. This position will remain posted until filled. Applicants should apply via our internal or external career site.