Software Development Engineer II, AWS EKS at Amazon
Seattle, WA
$143,700–$194,400from the description
Jul 10, 2026
Seattle, WA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A mid-level software engineering role focused on the node-level infrastructure underpinning Amazon EKS. Day-to-day work spans building and maintaining optimized AMIs, managing GPU and accelerator driver integration (including qualification of new instance types), operating a node monitoring agent, and evolving container runtimes and kubelet configurations. The role suits engineers with solid Linux systems and Kubernetes internals experience who are comfortable with both feature development and 24/7 on-call operational responsibilities.
Senior level · 3+ years · Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA · Bachelor's required · Full-time
Advertised as Mid, but the requirements read as Senior.
“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 8,200 people in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 6,200–10,700
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.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
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 (6)
The title 'SDE-2' maps to Amazon's Level 5, which is a mid-level designation by title — hence the level advertised in the title is Mid. However, the actual requirements (3+ years experience, 2+ years architecture/design, end-to-end ownership of complex systems, 24/7 on-call, mentoring junior engineers, driving technical design decisions) reflect Senior-level scope and responsibility.
The degree requirement (Bachelor's in CS, Engineering, Mathematics, or related field) is listed as a Basic Qualification with no 'or equivalent experience' escape clause, so it is treated as a hard gate.
The one modern language requirement (Python, Ruby, Golang, Java, C++, C#, or Rust) is a hard gate from Basic Qualifications; all named options are listed as alternatives since any one satisfies the requirement.
All Preferred Qualifications (Kubernetes/Docker/containers, Linux/RHEL, CloudFormation/Chef/Puppet/Salt/Ansible, cloud infrastructure, open-source contributions, monitoring/observability) are listed under an explicit 'Preferred Qualifications' heading and are not hard gates.
The job description is rich with specific technologies mentioned in narrative/responsibilities context (AMIs, kubelet, DRA, NVIDIA drivers, containerd, runc, SOCI, EFA, Nitro, systemd, GPU Operator, etc.) but none of these appear in the Basic Qualifications section; they are treated as stack context rather than hard gates.
Compensation is quoted as a base salary range of $143,700–$194,400 annually for Seattle, WA; the posting notes the package also includes sign-on payments and RSUs.
Read the full posting
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