Build microservices for Amazon Ads' petabyte-scale central data lake (Analytics & Data Management team)

This SDE role is on the Analytics & Data Management (ADM) team within Ads AI Core Infra, which owns the central data lake unifying petabytes of advertising data (campaigns, ad-serving, billing, clicks, impressions) for self-service analytics across the org. You'll design and deploy Java/AWS microservices and work with big-data tools like Spark, EMR, and Athena as the team rebuilds its data lake for 5x growth. Requires 3+ years of professional software development and 2+ years of design/architecture experience.

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What this interview tests

Petabyte-scale data lake / big-data pipeline design
Java and AWS microservice architecture
Big-data tooling: Spark, EMR, Athena
Operational ownership: monitoring data availability and quality
Cross-functional requirements gathering with product/program managers

Common question themes

Describe a large-scale data pipeline you built and where it hit scaling limits

Walk through designing a Java/AWS microservice for a data-processing pipeline

How do you ensure testability and low operational footprint in your code

Tell me about automating monitoring for data availability or quality

How do you translate requirements from Product/Program Managers into a technical design

How candidates describe it

Real Software Development Engineer interview stories — retold from candidates' public write-ups, with sources.

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