Six Figure Work

Software Development Engineer, Leo Space Security

Amazon

Company websiteamazon.com (Amazon, opens in new tab)

Base salary $143,700  to $194,400

Employer-published annual base salary, USD. Advertised base range in Arlington, VA +1 more

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  • LocationArlington, VA +1 more
  • WorkplaceWorkplace not stated
  • Status at last checkSource accepting applications when checked
  • Last checked (4 h ago) · observed since
All places named
  • Arlington, VA
  • Herndon, VA

About this job

Amazon Leo is a constellation of Low Earth Orbit satellites that will provide low-latency, high-speed broadband network connectivity to unserved and underserved communities around the world.

We are looking for a software development engineer to join the founding cohort of the Engineering and R\&D team within Leo Space Security. The team defends the manufacturing lines, launch sites, and global ground infrastructure behind the constellation from the most sophisticated threat actors on the planet. You will build a neurosymbolic reasoning platform: large language model agents combined with a knowledge graph and real-time asset state store that ground every conclusion in verifiable fact, so every automated decision is auditable. The platform automates incident response, threat analysis, offensive security testing, and detection authoring, backed by a high-throughput streaming pipeline that takes a detection from concept to production in hours. The team is new and the surface area is wide: the features you ship become the system Leo's security teams run on from day one.

Export Control Requirement

Due to applicable export control laws and regulations, candidates must be a U.S. citizen.

Key job responsibilities

You will own building software features across the platform and deliver them end to end: clarify the requirements, write the design, ship the code, instrument the system, and keep it healthy in production. The features you own are concrete and high-consequence: the live state-of-the-world record that answers where every tracked device is, who last held it, and whether it is where it should be; consolidated detection that surfaces events from every Leo site type as one signal instead of siloed alarms; automated triage so security events arrive enriched and pre-adjudicated, with containment executed in seconds under human approval; self-service workflows that cut multi-day manual processes down to seconds; and the instrumentation that produces the metrics the security organization reports against. You will code independently, make design tradeoffs with guidance from the senior engineers who own the platform architecture, review your teammates' code, and operate what you build.

A day in the life

One morning you might ship a correlation feature that joins device, custody, and access events so triage surfaces a pattern no single data source shows. That afternoon you could be debugging why a detection's latency regressed, profiling the pipeline stage that slowed it down, and adding the metric that catches it next time. The next day you might pair with an applied scientist to backtest a candidate detection against retained telemetry before it ships, then pick up an operational ticket and automate away its root cause so no one handles it again. You will obsess over the two latencies that define the platform, the time from event to detection and the time from detection to containment action, and treat every manual step you find as a candidate for deletion. The team is new, so what you build now becomes the foundation others build on.

About the team

Leo Space Security protects the people, facilities, hardware, and supply chain behind a global satellite constellation. The Engineering and R\&D team within this organization builds the platforms and tooling the security pillar teams operate on, moving security operations from manual triage to correlation-based detection, automated response, and agentic AI. The team is composed of applied scientists, software engineers, and security engineers working across physical and digital security domains.

#### Inclusive Team Culture

In Amazon Security, it's in our nature to learn and be curious. Ongoing DEI events and learning experiences inspire us to continue learning and to embrace our uniqueness. Addressing the toughest security challenges requires that we seek out and celebrate a diversity of ideas, perspectives, and voices.

#### Training & Career Growth

We're continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth's Best Employer. That's why you'll find endless knowledge-sharing, training, and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional.

#### Work/Life Balance

We value work-life harmony. Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why flexible work hours and arrangements are part of our culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there's nothing we can't achieve.

Basic Qualifications

  • 3+ years of non-internship professional software development experience
  • 2+ years of non-internship design or architecture (design patterns, reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems experience
  • 1+ years of software development engineer or related occupational experience
  • 1+ years of designing and developing large-scale, multi-tiered, multi-threaded, embedded or distributed software applications, tools, systems, and services using: C#, C++, Java, or Perl experience

Preferred Qualifications

  • 3+ years of full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, and operations experience
  • Bachelor's degree in computer science or equivalent
  • Experience in one or more of the following domains: access- control system and methodology, network security, application- and system-development security, security architecture and models, cryptography, and operations security
  • Experience with performance optimization, including memory management, multi-threading, and profiling production systems
  • Experience with distributed systems fundamentals, including consensus, message passing, and fault tolerance
  • Experience with graph databases, knowledge graph platforms, or large-scale data modeling (Neptune, Neo4j, or equivalent)

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 https://amazon.jobs/content/en/how-we-hire/accommodations 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 https://amazon.jobs/en/benefits.

USA, VA, Arlington - 143,700.00 - 194,400.00 USD annually

USA, VA, Herndon - 143,700.00 - 194,400.00 USD annually

Source: Amazon · View original posting (opens in new tab)

Pay in context

This role's base floor ($143,700) is above 30% of the 527 Software Engineering roles in Virginia listed on this site; 56 others list the same floor. Their median floor is $159,000; the middle half runs from $131,278 to $179,700.

Only jobs on this site count, and each one publishes a base salary of $100,000 or more, so this compares six-figure jobs with each other, not with the whole market. Computed Nov 6, 2026.

This range next to 6 other live Amazon roles with the nearest advertised base floor
Chart as a table
This range next to 6 other live Amazon roles with the nearest advertised base floor
RolePublished base
Software Development Engineer, Leo Space Security (this listing)$143,700 - $194,400
Software Developer II, Cosmos$143,700 - $194,400
Software Dev Engineer, AWS WAF Bot Control and Fraud Prevention$143,700 - $194,400
Software Development Engineer, Robotics Development and Packaging Innovation$143,700 - $194,400
SDE II, Aspen$143,700 - $194,400
Software Development Engineer$143,700 - $194,400
Software Development Engineer, StoreGen$143,700 - $194,400

Same $100K to $400K scale as every card. All Amazon roles · How to read the bar

Observed changes

  1. Began meeting the published-salary criteria
  2. First observed on the employer's board
Observed since
Employer-stated posting date
2026-10-21
Where this pay comes from

Location as the employer wrote it: US, VA, Arlington • US, VA, Herndon

USA, VA, Arlington - 143,700.00 - 194,400.00 USD annually

Method
Employer text, read with fixed rules and re-verified
Checked
Rule set
us-base-v2

The pay passage appears in the employer's own job text. Fixed, deterministic rules located it, and the passage below was checked against the stored copy of the posting.

What we verified

  • The pay figures come from the employer's own listing, quoted exactly above.
  • The pay is an annual base salary in US dollars with a minimum of at least $100,000.
  • The role was publicly listed on the employer's job board when last checked.

We do not verify what the employer will actually offer, whether the employer is still recruiting for the role, or anything beyond what the employer published. Full methodology.