Software Development Engineer, AWS OpenSearch at Amazon
Austin, TX
$143,700–$194,400from the description
Jul 14, 2026
Austin, TX
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A software engineering role focused on building and maintaining distributed, multi-tenant cloud infrastructure for Amazon's managed OpenSearch service. Day-to-day work spans cluster management, data ingestion pipelines, query optimization, and auto-scaling, primarily in Java and Rust. The role suits engineers comfortable with ambiguity who want to work across the full stack — from control plane APIs to data plane performance — on systems operating at large scale.
Mid level · 3+ years · Austin, TX · Full-time
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 510 people in the Austin, TX area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 380–660
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
What the occupation pays Median $137,069 (middle half $106,287–$172,440). 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 (6)
The title is 'Software Development Engineer' with no level modifier, so advertised seniority is Unspecified. The hard requirements gate on only 3+ years of professional software development and 2+ years of design/architecture experience, which maps to Mid-level despite the ambitious scope described in the narrative.
Java and Rust are called out as 'primary languages' in the role description with firm language ('our primary languages are Java and Rust'), so both are treated as hard gates. Python and Go appear in narrative context ('you will work with a variety of core languages and technologies including Rust, Java, Python, Golang') without gating language.
AWS and OpenSearch appear throughout the narrative and stack description but are not explicitly required in the qualifications sections.
The 2+ years of design/architecture experience is stated at the role level against distributed systems design; it is captured as the years demanded on the distributed systems skill rather than as a separate the overall years minimum override (the overall years minimum reflects the 3+ year overall software development gate).
A Bachelor's degree in computer science is listed only under Preferred Qualifications and is explicitly qualified as 'or equivalent', so the degree requirement is set to None.
Compensation is quoted as a base salary range for Austin, TX: $143,700–$194,400 annually, plus sign-on and RSUs per the posting.
Read the full posting
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