Software Development Manager, Airspace Management and Orchestration, Prime Air

About the role

Amazon Prime Air is seeking a Software Development Manager to lead and grow the Airspace Management and Orchestration System (AMOS) software team. This is a unique opportunity to shape the system that coordinates a fleet of autonomous delivery drones, manages shared airspace, and optimizes deliveries per hour as Prime Air expands.

As the software leader for AMOS, you will own the architecture, development, and operation of scalable services that orchestrate drone missions and coordinate activity across drone and ground systems. Your team will build the capabilities to plan and sequence missions, deconflict flight paths, and allocate airspace capacity-turning advances in planning and optimization into reliable production services. You will set the technical direction and engineering standards needed to support growing fleet sizes, delivery volumes, and operating locations.

You will lead an existing team of approximately 15 software developers, developing engineering talent and growing the team to meet an expanding mission. Working closely with scientists, systems engineers, and teams across drone software, ground systems, and flight operations, you will translate complex operational requirements and scientific algorithms into services that deliver measurable improvements in throughput, reliability, and efficiency.

This role requires a leader who can dive deep into distributed systems architecture and complex planning problems while setting a clear strategy, developing a high-performing team, and driving delivery across organizational boundaries. You will balance long-term architectural investments with near-term operational needs, building a service and an organization that can scale with Prime Air.

Key job responsibilities

Lead and grow a software development team building scalable services for fleet orchestration, mission planning, and airspace management, owning the architecture, development, and operation of highly available distributed services that scale with fleet size, delivery volume, and operating locations.

Establish service-level objectives for availability, latency, and reliability, and build observability, incident response, and operational mechanisms that sustain uptime and accelerate recovery, including service security, access controls, and secure development practices in partnership with security teams.

Drive integration with internal and external services through clear API contracts and resilient interfaces, partnering with scientists, systems engineers, and teams across drone software, ground systems, and flight operations to translate planning algorithms and operational requirements into reliable production capabilities.

• Establish engineering practices for automated testing, deployment, rollback, capacity planning, and disaster recovery to enable frequent, dependable releases.
• Recruit, develop, and retain engineering talent, growing technical leaders and building a culture of operational excellence and continuous improvement.
• Define and track service health, delivery commitments, infrastructure costs, and operational outcomes, and set and communicate the technical strategy and roadmap, aligning leadership and partner teams on priorities, dependencies, and tradeoffs.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field
• 5+ years of designing or architecting (design patterns, reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems experience
• 5+ years of providing technical leadership and project management for all aspects of the software development lifecycle experience

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in communicating with users, other technical teams, and senior leadership to collect requirements, describe software product features, technical designs, and product strategy
• Experience in recruiting, hiring, mentoring/coaching and managing teams of Software Engineers to improve their skills, and make them more effective, product software engineers
• Experience designing or architecting (design patterns, reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems, or experience in professional, non-internship software development
• Experience with Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations or similar technical platforms, or experience interpreting flight monitoring systems or similar technical platforms
• Experience with hardware/software integration and real-time systems
• Master's degree or above in engineering or equivalent

Additional information

Our inclusive culture empowers Amazonians to deliver the best results for our customers. If the country/region you're applying in isn't listed, please contact your Recruiting Partner.

Pay and benefits

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.

USA, WA, Seattle - 184,900.00 - 250,200.00 USD annually