Senior Software Development Manager, Hydro

Description

Hydro is an emerging framework for building correct, performant distributed systems born at Berkeley and evolving in open source with a center of gravity at AWS. We are looking for a Senior Software Development Manager to lead the AWS Hydro team, own the technical strategy, scale the engineering organization, and grow the open source community.

This is a high-visibility role to help define the future of reliable and agile software engineering, guided by AI and protected by cutting-edge correctness techniques. This is an opportunity to work with AWS leaders in collaboration with technologists from Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz. You'll collaborate on products targeted at a broad audience: internal AWS developers building some of our most critical infrastructure, and open-source innovators building the next generation of reliable, scalable services. The role offers high visibility internally with AWS leadership, and externally in open source.

• Lead the vision and execution for the Hydro team centered at AWS

• Build and scale a world-class engineering team delivering the core framework, compiler, simulation-testing framework, and deployment harnesses

• Drive open source community growth, partner engagement, and ecosystem expansion

• Represent Hydro to customers, partners, and developers

Key job responsibilities

• Own the roadmap, delivery, and operations for the Hydro framework spanning the language APIs, tool ecosystem, observability and deployment patterns.

• Build, mentor, and scale a high-performing engineering organization, fostering a culture of ownership, technical excellence, and speed.

• Drive open source community strategy including contributor experience, governance, ecosystem expansion.

• Set and raise the technical bar — establish AI-assisted development workflows, drive architectural decisions, and ensure the framework remains model-driven and developer-friendly.

• Drive executive alignment through VP-level reviews, PR/FAQs, and strategic narratives positioning Hydro within AWS's broader SDLC strategy.

• Champion production readiness — own deployment toolkits, reference architectures, and observability patterns for both green-field and brown-field adoption, taking distributed systems written in Hydro from prototype to production.

• Represent Hydro externally at conferences, in blog posts, and through direct customer engagement.

A day in the life

You'll split your time between strategic leadership and hands-on technical engagement. Mornings might include reviewing community PRs and contributor roadmaps, followed by architecture deep-dives with your engineering leads on multi-agent orchestration. Afternoons could involve partnering with AWS Kiro or Automated Reasoning teams on integration work, presenting roadmap updates to VP-level stakeholders, or engaging directly with customers adopting Hydro for production workloads. You operate as the single-threaded owner for Hydro across open source, product, and engineering.

About the team

We're a high-ownership, high-velocity team of technologists and developers operating in a space that many of us pioneered at Berkeley. The bulk of the original Hydro team is now in this group at AWS, including the science and development leads; new PhD students at Berkeley continue to push the envelope in collaboration with us, alongside the broader open-source community.

The team is now growing beyond its initial startup-style mode: the software is gaining adoption in high-stakes use cases, and we’re bringing on more engineering talent both junior and senior. Coming out of the university and startups with a will to have impact, we foster an environment that celebrates knowledge-sharing, mentorship and working backward from customer needs. Senior members engage in one-on-one mentoring as well as customer engagement, and we care deeply about career growth — assigning projects that build both product and technical expertise so you feel empowered to take on more complex challenges over time.

Basic Qualifications

• 10+ years of engineering experience

• 5+ years of engineering team management experience

• 10+ years of planning, designing, developing and delivering consumer software experience

• Experience partnering with product or program management teams

• Experience managing multiple concurrent programs, projects and development teams in an Agile environment

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working with open-source community and contributors

• Experience partnering with product and program management teams

• Experience designing and developing large scale, distributed applications

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

Los Angeles County applicants: Job duties for this position include: work safely and cooperatively with other employees, supervisors, and staff; adhere to standards of excellence despite stressful conditions; communicate effectively and respectfully with employees, supervisors, and staff to ensure exceptional customer service; and follow all federal, state, and local laws and Company policies. Criminal history may have a direct, adverse, and negative relationship with some of the material job duties of this position. These include the duties and responsibilities listed above, as well as the abilities to adhere to company policies, exercise sound judgment, effectively manage stress and work safely and respectfully with others, exhibit trustworthiness and professionalism, and safeguard business operations and the Company’s reputation. Pursuant to the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

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, CA, San Francisco - 253,100.00 - 342,300.00 USD annually