Security Engineer III, AWS Proactive Security Team

Full Job Description

Are you passionate about protecting systems and customers at massive scale? As a Security Engineer III at Amazon, you will lead security risk reduction efforts across teams, tackling complex and ambiguous security challenges that directly safeguard the services millions of customers depend on. In this role, you will design and validate security controls, conduct in-depth security reviews, and build pragmatic solutions that generalize across systems — reducing cost and effort for engineering teams while raising the security bar. You will work at the intersection of technology strategy and risk management, balancing competing constraints to deliver outcomes that are extensible, efficient, and low-friction for builders. If you are a collaborative problem solver who thrives on turning undefined security challenges into repeatable frameworks, we want to hear from you.

Key job responsibilities

• Lead complex security reviews, threat modeling exercises, and security investigations across your team and partner teams, identifying risks and driving pragmatic mitigation strategies that reduce overall security exposure.
• Design and build security frameworks, runbooks, and rubrics for new problem domains, enabling other engineers to apply your work in a repeatable and scalable way across the organization.
• Engage proactively with product and system owners to review architectures, validate security controls, and guide teams through secure design decisions — including reviewing or writing code, scripts, and detections.
• Communicate security risk and design decisions clearly in writing for both technical and non-technical audiences, and lead inclusive discussions to build consensus when navigating conflicting priorities or trade-offs.
• Mentor and coach multiple security engineers, contribute to hiring assessments, and help establish mature security practices including alarms, telemetry, runbooks, and retrospective processes for your team.

A day in the life You might start your morning reviewing a security design proposal from a partner team, identifying gaps in authentication or data handling and providing actionable feedback. Later, you could lead a threat modeling session for a new service launch, working through risk trade-offs with engineers and stakeholders. In the afternoon, you may write a detection script, update a security runbook, or mentor a teammate on secure coding practices. Throughout it all, you are balancing hands-on technical work with strategic thinking to keep security moving forward.

About the team Our team is focused on reducing security risk and enabling builders across Amazon to ship securely and confidently. We partner closely with engineering teams to design controls, respond to emerging threats, and raise the overall security posture of the systems we support. We value collaboration, curiosity, and a willingness to challenge assumptions in pursuit of better outcomes. If you are excited about solving hard security problems alongside a talented group of engineers who care deeply about protecting customers, this is the team for you.

Diverse Experiences Amazon Security values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn’t followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don’t let it stop you from applying.

Why Amazon Security? At Amazon, security is central to maintaining customer trust and delivering delightful customer experiences. Our organization is responsible for creating and maintaining a high bar for security across all of Amazon’s products and services. We offer talented security professionals the chance to accelerate their careers with opportunities to build experience in a wide variety of areas including cloud, devices, retail, entertainment, healthcare, operations, and physical stores.

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

• 4+ years of non-internship background in troubleshooting systems issues, analyzing logs, or automating complex tasks using command line tools experience
• 5+ years of work in identifying security issues and risks, and developing mitigation plans experience
• 4+ years of (non-internship) scripting, programming, and security code review in common programming languages experience
• Knowledge of at least two of the following programming languages: Scala, Java, Python, C/C++, or Go
• Experience (non-internship) in industry-based security vulnerabilities identification, attack patterns, and remediation techniques
• Experience as a mentor, tech lead or leading an engineering team

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience applying threat modeling or other risk identification techniques or equivalent
• Experience with security in service-oriented architectures/microservices and web services

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, TX, Austin - 178,400.00 - 226,700.00 USD annually USA, WA, Seattle - 178,400.00 - 226,700.00 USD annually

4+ years of non-internship background in troubleshooting systems issues, analyzing logs, or automating complex tasks using command line tools experience 5+ years of work in identifying security issues and risks, and developing mitigation plans experience 4+ years of (non-internship) scripting, programming, and security code review in common programming languages experience Knowledge of at least two of the following programming languages: Scala, Java, Python, C/C++, or Go Experience (non-internship) in industry-based security vulnerabilities identification, attack patterns, and remediation techniques Experience as a mentor, tech lead or leading an engineering team