Principal Security Engineer, AWS Security

Come lead the technical strategy for how Amazon detects and stops the worlds most sophisticated cyber threats!

We build and operate automated threat detection and mitigation systems that process over 1PB of security telemetry daily across host network identity and physical security domains. As a Principal Security Engineer you will define the technical direction for this work identifying the hardest unsolved problems designing and prototyping new cross-domain threat detection ideas and driving these new initiatives to completion across multiple teams and organizations.

You will operate with high autonomy in ambiguous spaces where the problems are not handed to you. You will work alongside software development engineers data scientists and security engineers mentoring across job families building consensus across teams on technical and security trade-offs and raising the technical bar for the org. Your work will directly protect every AWS customer worldwide and help preserve our customers trust in us. The adversaries are real the scale is unmatched and our hardest problems are still unsolved.



Key job responsibilities
Serve as an org-wide technical lead setting technical direction shaping long-term strategy and increasing each teams productivity and effectiveness
Identify and prioritize the highest-impact security detection problems across the org driving clarity in ambiguous spaces
Design and prototype new detection approaches then drive them to production through engineering teams
Stay connected to all critical projects across the org auditing technical decisions and providing guidance on work led by others
Mentor engineers across multiple job families and help managers guide the career growth of their team members
Sponsor cross-org technical initiatives with partner teams across Amazon Security and AWS driving decisions forward and unblocking teams to ensure delivery
Build consensus across teams on important security and technical trade-offs driving closure and alignment toward coherent outcomes
Identify evaluate and advocate for new technologies to improve threat detection and mitigation capabilities
Clearly communicate security risks and technical trade-offs to business leaders and non-technical stakeholders


About the team
You will help define the technical strategy for how Amazon detects and stops advanced threats with the autonomy to identify the problems worth solving and an engineering org behind you to help build the solutions. You will identify threats and security risks that are not readily apparent to traditional detection approaches proactively taking action before those risks materialize. You will write new threat detectors and automated mitigations to catch actual threat actors. You will work across Amazon and have direct influence on how AWS protects its infrastructure and addition to identifying new problems you will frame the solutions demonstrate their feasibility and drive buy-in with leadership to get them funded staffed and delivered. The problems are real the adversaries are sophisticated and the impact you can make is global and immediate.

Experience performing security investigations detection engineering threat hunting and/or incident response
Experience with detection engineering and/or anomaly detection within security
Understanding of Tactics Techniques and Procedures (TTPs) used by threat actors or groups
Knowledge of security telemetry across 2 domains (e.g. hosts networks cloud physical security)
Ability to develop code with at least one modern language such as Python
Proven ability to provide technical and strategic leadership across multiple teams and/or within a large organization
Experience communicating technical concepts to a non-technical audience
Citizen within the EU


Experience using common cloud services (IAM Lambda EC2 VPC S3) for security response and/or automation
Experience processing and analyzing security telemetry at scale
Experience using machine learning and/or statistical methods for anomaly detection in security
Experience with GenAI/LLMs applied to security workflows
Experience working with software developers data scientists and/or product management teams


Amazon is an equal opportunities employer. We believe passionately that employing a diverse workforce is central to our success. We make recruiting decisions based on your experience and skills. We value your passion to discover invent simplify and build. Protecting your privacy and the security of your data is a longstanding top priority for Amazon. Please consult our Privacy Notice ( to know more about how we collect use and transfer the personal data of our candidates.

Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status disability or other legally protected status.

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