Senior Security Engineer, Amazon Optics

About the role

Amazon Optics is building the next generation of physical security software that protects every AWS data center and Amazon corporate facility worldwide. We need a Security Engineer III who will own the security posture of distributed systems that "have to be available when everyone is having their worst day." In this role, you will lead security risk reduction across the Optics platform—spanning physical access control, alarm monitoring, video surveillance, and device management services deployed to every AWS region. You will design and validate security controls for systems that integrate with commodity hardware and enterprise offerings at fleet scale, ensuring we maintain the highest security bar while enabling rapid delivery. You will tackle large, ambiguous security problems where the customer need is clear but the security strategy is not yet defined—constructing frameworks, threat models, and pragmatic mitigations that generalize across our growing infrastructure. You will operate as a security lead for the team, reviewing architecture decisions for secure design, driving closure on escalations, and mentoring engineers on security best practices. Your work directly protects the trust that millions of AWS customers place in our platform.

Responsibilities

• Lead security architecture reviews and threat modeling for services deployed across all AWS regions in a fully Infrastructure as Code environment, identifying one-way-door technical decisions and advocating for the right long-term solutions
• Design and implement security controls that centralize protections across the platform rather than requiring individual service teams to solve independently
• Construct security frameworks, runbooks, and rubrics for new problem domains that enable repeatable, scalable security outcomes across the organization
• Drive security investigations, escalation handling, and root-cause analysis through COE processes, ensuring systemic issues are permanently resolved
• Review code and architecture produced by engineering peers to ensure secure design, least privilege, proper authentication/authorization, and safe data handling
• Influence security decisions across partner organizations by balancing risk trade-offs with business velocity and identifying pragmatic compensating controls
• Mentor and develop security engineers on the team, contributing to hiring assessments, promotion evaluations, and career guidance

About the team

Amazon Optics is an AWS Security organization. Our services secure physical access, monitor alarms, manage video surveillance, and track device health across hundreds of data centers and corporate facilities globally. We value strong intuition backed by metrics and data, and we provide solutions where "can't be done" isn't considered an answer. The team operates at the intersection of physical and logical security—building software that integrates with real-world hardware while meeting the availability, scalability, and security standards of AWS. We foster a collaborative environment where engineers take ownership of critical systems end-to-end and are empowered to solve problems that directly protect every AWS customer.

Basic qualifications

• 4+ years of non-internship background in troubleshooting systems issues, analyzing logs, or automating complex tasks using command line tools experience
• 5+ years of work in identifying security issues and risks, and developing mitigation plans experience
• 4+ years of (non-internship) scripting, programming, and security code review in common programming languages experience
• Knowledge of at least two of the following programming languages: Scala, Java, Python, C/C++, or Go
• Experience (non-internship) in industry-based security vulnerabilities identification, attack patterns, and remediation techniques
• Experience as a mentor, tech lead or leading an engineering team

Preferred qualifications

• Experience applying threat modeling or other risk identification techniques or equivalent
• Experience with security in service-oriented architectures/microservices and web services

Pay

USA, VA, Herndon - 178,400.00 - 226,700.00 USD annually. 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.

Benefits

Amazon 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.

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