Director, Software Engineering, Container Orchestration - Seattle, WA

DESCRIPTION · Imagine leading the engineering teams behind infrastructure that quietly powers some of the world's most demanding workloads - processing billions of container launches every week, orchestrating compute resources across the globe, and enabling customers to focus on ...

Job description

DESCRIPTION

Imagine leading the engineering teams behind infrastructure that quietly powers some of the world's most demanding workloads - processing billions of container launches every week, orchestrating compute resources across the globe, and enabling customers to focus on innovation rather than infrastructure complexity. That's the opportunity in front of you.

We're looking for a Director of Engineering who thrives who thrives in the demanding world of massive scale, operational rigor, and customer obsession. You'll lead the teams building and operating container orchestration platforms that our customers depend on for their most critical applications - the kind where every millisecond of latency matters and where customers expect always-on reliability and we deliver.

You'll be driving the technical evolution of container technologies, workload scheduling systems, and platform infrastructure that needs to stay ahead of exponentially growing customer demands. Your teams will tackle challenges like supporting diverse customer workloads while balancing security with speed ,optimizing container performance at unprecedented scale, and building scheduling algorithms that efficiently pack workloads while maintaining strict isolation guarantees.

You'll have the autonomy to shape both business and technical strategy, the resources to build world-class teams, and the direct customer impact that comes from operating infrastructure at a massive scale. Your decisions will influence how billions of containers are launched, scheduled, and managed every week.

We need someone who gets energized by operational excellence, who sees on-call rotations not as burdens but as opportunities to build more resilient systems, who treats every incident as a learning moment, and who believes that the best way to serve customers is to obsess over the details that make systems reliable, fast, and delightful to use.

If you're the kind of leader who can translate complex distributed systems challenges into clear technical roadmaps, who mentors engineers to think like owners, and who won't rest until your services achieve operational excellence that sets industry benchmarks, we should talk.

Key job responsibilities

Technical Leadership & Strategy

• Lead engineering teams responsible for building and operating massive-scale application lifecycle platforms serving thousands of enterprise customers
• Drive innovation in workload scheduling, resource allocation, and multi-tenant isolation technologies
• Drive technical vision and architecture for next-generation container runtime environments, image management systems, and workload scheduling infrastructure
• Establish operational excellence standards for systems processing billions of container launches weekly with industry-leading reliability metrics

Operational Excellence

• Own the operational health of large-scale distributed systems with stringent SLA requirements (99.95%+ availability)
• Build and scale teams focused on system reliability, performance optimization, and customer experience
• Implement comprehensive monitoring, alerting, and automated remediation strategies for complex distributed workloads
• Drive continuous improvement in operational metrics including latency, throughput, and resource efficiency

Customer Focus

• Partner with enterprise customers to understand their container workload requirements and pain points
• Translate customer needs into technical roadmaps and feature priorities
• Ensure world-class customer experience through proactive monitoring, rapid incident response, and continuous service improvements
• Build mechanisms for gathering and acting on customer feedback at scale

Team Development & Culture

• Build, mentor, and grow high-performing engineering teams across multiple locations
• Foster a culture of ownership, innovation, and operational excellence
• Establish engineering best practices, code quality standards, and technical review processes
• Develop talent pipeline and succession planning for critical technical roles

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience designing, building, operating, and managing large-scale distributed systems or web services
• 15+ years of software engineering experience with 5+ years in engineering leadership roles
• Deep expertise in container technologies (Docker, containerd, runc) and orchestration systems
• Strong understanding of Linux internals, virtualization technologies, and infrastructure automation

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience in Kubernetes, Docker or containers ecosystem
• Background in kernel development, systems programming, or low-level infrastructure
• Knowledge of security best practices for multi-tenant container environments
• Experience with cost optimization and resource efficiency at scale

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 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

USA, WA, Seattle - 264, ,000.00 USD annually