Cleared AWS SDE supporting Aurora, DynamoDB, EMR, OpenSearch, RDS and Redshift infrastructure for government customers requiring TS/SCI clearance

This role is in AWS Infrastructure Services (AIS) in Herndon, VA, working directly with Amazon's largest and most demanding customers on its massively-scaled database services (Aurora, DynamoDB, EMR, OpenSearch, RDS, Redshift), and requires the candidate to currently hold an active TS/SCI clearance and be willing to obtain a TS/SCI with polygraph. Basic qualifications call for 3+ years of professional software development and 2+ years of design/architecture experience, placing this at mid-level, with heavy emphasis on Linux/networking depth and deep technical troubleshooting rather than pure feature-building.

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Likely format

Amazon's standard SDE loop: online coding assessment, then phone/virtual onsite rounds mixing coding, systems/networking depth, and Leadership Principles behavioral interviews (STAR format), per Amazon's well-known public process; clearance verification is handled alongside/after the technical loop.

What this interview tests

Active TS/SCI security clearance (hard requirement)
Deep Linux and networking troubleshooting fundamentals
Root-cause analysis and technical post-mortems on distributed infrastructure
Coding in Java (tooling) and/or Python (systems problems)
Operating at massive scale (thousands of devices/servers)
Amazon Leadership Principles behavioral interviewing (STAR)

Common question themes

Confirm current TS/SCI clearance status and willingness to obtain TS/SCI with polygraph

Walk through a root-cause investigation and post-mortem for a production distributed-systems issue

Linux/networking fundamentals: diagnosing a degraded service across servers and network layers

Coding: a Java tooling problem or a Python systems-automation problem

Designing or streamlining a process to operate reliably across a very large device/server fleet

STAR: Think Big and Earn Trust stories tied to large-scale customer-facing infrastructure work

How candidates describe it

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

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