Senior Software Development Engineer, Ads Nova

Lead the technical strategy for a greenfield startup team building AI-powered vertical advertising products — simplifying full-funnel solutions at internet scale with agentic AI models across strategic verticals including financial services, automotive, and local businesses. There is no known answer or existing pattern to follow — we are defining the space from the ground up. Amazon Advertising is building this team to diversify demand and transform how vertical advertisers grow on Amazon through specialized, AI-driven advertising experiences. You'll partner closely with Principal Engineers and Scientists to define the engineering roadmap, translating ambiguous business problems into scalable system architectures and making foundational technical decisions that will shape the product for years to come. This is an ambiguous, fast-moving environment where the problems are big, the solutions are yet to be invented, and the impact is immediate. If you're energized by building state-of-the-art products from scratch and shaping the future of AI-driven advertising, this is your team. Key job responsibilities - Own the technical strategy and architectural direction for a business-critical initiative — designing, developing, launching, and maintaining AI-powered advertising solutions that simplify the advertiser experience across strategic verticals - Partner closely with Principal Engineers and Scientists to define the engineering roadmap, translating ambiguous business problems into scalable system architectures - Design and build end-to-end services and platforms from the ground up, making foundational technical decisions that shape the product for years to come - Drive cross-functional collaboration across engineering, science, and product teams to deliver integrated solutions that balance advertiser needs with customer experience - Evaluate and adopt emerging technologies — including agentic AI models — to accelerate product development and unlock new advertising capabilities - Mentor engineers, establish engineering best practices, and raise the technical bar as the team scales - Influence the long-term technical vision while delivering iterative, high-impact results in a fast-paced startup environment A day in the life You might start your morning reviewing a technical design document, providing feedback that helps a teammate refine their approach. By mid-morning, you're deep in code — prototyping a critical interface or refactoring a component to improve reliability. After lunch, you join a cross-team architecture discussion where you advocate for a pragmatic path forward. Later, you pair with a junior engineer on a tricky problem, helping them break it down into manageable pieces. Throughout the day, you move fluidly between hands-on coding, technical leadership, and collaboration. About the team Our team is developing a fine-tuned LLM trained on proprietary ads data to power the next generation of advertiser experiences. The work is highly ambiguous and everyone on the team has the opportunity to lead complex efforts where there are no existing solutions or playbooks to start from.