Software Development Engineer (Elastic Kubernetes Service), EKS Scalability & Performance at Amazon
Seattle, WA
$143,700–$194,400from the description
Jul 9, 2026
Seattle, WA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A distributed systems engineering role focused on the scalability of the Kubernetes control plane behind Amazon EKS. Day-to-day work spans building and operating an autoscaling service that dynamically resizes control planes, maintaining SLA measurement pipelines, and contributing to the architecture supporting very large clusters running AI workloads. Suits engineers with distributed systems experience who want deep involvement in Kubernetes internals and upstream community work.
Mid level · 3+ years · Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA · Bachelor's required · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 7,800 people in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 5,900–10,200
Applicant volume Heavy — This req sits in a large pool with little in its requirements to thin it, and auto-apply tools fire at everything in the occupation. Applying early and leading with the rare skills below is what gets read.
What the occupation pays Median $170,959 (middle half $135,720–$216,519). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (8)
The title 'Software Development Engineer' carries no explicit seniority level, so advertised seniority is Unspecified. However, the minimum experience gate is 3+ years of professional software development, which maps to Mid-level on the career ladder — despite the role's ambitious scope (EKS Ultraclusters, 100k-node clusters), the hard-required experience floor does not exceed what is typical for a Mid-level hire.
The language requirement (C#, C++, Java, or Perl) is listed as a hard gate under Basic Qualifications with 1+ years demanded; C# is used as the primary name with the others captured as alternatives since the JD treats them as interchangeable options.
Distributed systems design experience (1+ years of designing large-scale, multi-tiered, multi-threaded, or distributed applications) is a hard gate from Basic Qualifications; no single named technology is specified, so it is listed as a skill reflecting the concrete requirement.
Object-oriented design (1+ years) is an explicit hard gate under Basic Qualifications.
Kubernetes, Docker/containers, and Kafka appear only under Preferred Qualifications and are therefore not hard gates.
The degree requirement states 'Bachelor's degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field' with no equivalent-experience escape clause, so the degree requirement is set to Bachelors.
Compensation is quoted as an annual base salary range of $143,700–$194,400 for the Seattle, WA location; the posting also mentions sign-on payments and RSUs but does not quantify them.
Ignored 1 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): object-oriented design.
Read the full posting
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