Software Development Engineer, Alexa Audio Playback Experience

Want to transform the way people enjoy video, music, radio and books? Come join the team that made Prime Music, Spotify, Pandora, Live radio, Audible books, Kindle books, Podcasts, Alexa on Fire TV and more available to Alexa customers. We are innovating on and changing the way our customers interact with media services and devices!

On the Alexa Entertainment Team, you will have an enormous opportunity to impact the customer experience, design, architecture, and implementation of cutting edge products that will be used every day by people you know. No matter what the role, we’re looking for people who are passionate about innovating on behalf of customers, demonstrate a high degree of product ownership, and want to have fun while they make history.

In this role you’ll have independent technical ownership on new customer features and supporting architecture on a day to day and week to week basis. You’ll learn new in-demand skills like building voice control interfaces and scalable API platforms interfacing with generative AI that will be highly valuable as you grow your career at Amazon and beyond. You’ll work directly with Product Management and Design to refine the customer experience for Alexa entertainment featured products. You’ll join a unique team in the Alexa organization with our own culture – we move fast to deliver new great features for customers and have a ton of fun doing it.

Come join us as we build the Voice OS for Entertainment in the home using cutting edge technologies. We’re breaking new ground and need your help to bring our vision to reality.

Key job responsibilities

A person in this role is expected to

1. Design, implement, and deliver software in ambiguous and complex problem spaces of Alexa Audio working with partners such as product managers, technical program managers, and senior/principal engineers to deliver on the business goals related to Playback Experience. Create designs to deliver personalized recommended content to users based on their recognized voice or to bring them their favorite radio stations and increasing the play queue rate, listening minutes while staying neutral on latency and friction.
2. Improve the consistency and integration between APEX software and partner team services such as Devices Experience, Music Skill Kit and Amazon Music.
3. Champion best practices for software engineering and operational excellence. This role is responsible for implementing the operational and engineering excellence roadmap across core audio services set by the leads. SDEs work to proactively address peak readiness, hardware efficiency, customer tickets, Shepherd risks, SAS risks, policy engine risks, scaling, throttling and improve availability & resiliency for Alexa Audio Services.
4. Influence technical architecture for long term architectural changes in delivery of key program features such as Personal Account Linking and Books Skills Kit by defining experience providers.
5. Provide valuable design feedback around latency considerations, two-way door decisions and valuable coding feedback around coding standards, quality, versioning to both internal and external away teams, guide them on best practices for developing within APEX owned services and push back on proposals which do not adhere to our high quality standards.
6. Mentor junior members of the team and help them onboard. They participate in interviews and hiring efforts for the team, and constantly share knowledge of components they own and have expert knowledge of through mediums such as demos, brownbags and org-wide emails.
7. Leadership principles that are most important for this role are ownership, deliver results, deep dive, bias for action, hire & develop the best, and earns trust.

A day in the life

We collaborate across disciplines. You will have the opportunity to work closely with product managers, UX designers and researchers, and business intelligence engineers to innovate, measure, analyze and refine the experiences we deliver to millions of customers across the planet on a daily basis. Our roles are all well defined, but we encourage individuals to cross boundaries and learn from each other.

About the team

Alexa Audio Playback Experience (APEX) team focuses on delivering world-class listening experiences. Our North star vision is “to be a listener’s preferred audio choice by becoming their trusted curator; helping them to experience the right audio content at the right moment that entertains, inspires, and/or informs – every day, everywhere, on every headless, screened, or wearable Alexa-enabled device, from all the world’s creators, developers and services”. We seek to address all the moments a listener has, with perfectly tailored audio experiences that enrich their lives. This role is an L5 software development engineer for APEX execution team which covers Media portability, Music alarms, Casting, Dynamic Grouping and MediaControl features and owns AlexaMusicConnectService, AlexaMusicPlayControlService and AlexaMediaAccessService services

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
• Experience programming with at least one software programming language

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

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. As a total compensation company, Amazon's package may include other elements such as sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs). Final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience, qualifications, and location. Amazon offers comprehensive benefits including health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, basic life & AD&D insurance), Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP), Deferred Profit Sharing Plan (DPSP), paid time off, and other resources to improve health and well-being. We thank all applicants for their interest, however only those interviewed will be advised as to hiring status.

CAN, BC, Vancouver - 114,800.00 - 191,800.00 CAD annually