Senior Security Engineer, Internal Audit

DESCRIPTION:

Amazon's Internal Audit Security team is seeking a Security Engineer III to join our mission of protecting customer data and keeping Amazon secure. You will operate as a security lead, partnering with world-class engineering teams to uncover vulnerabilities, design novel abuse scenarios, and assess large-scale security solutions across Amazon's products, services, and infrastructure.

In this role, you will leverage deep expertise in vulnerability assessment, exploitation, penetration testing, and red teaming to identify and mitigate risks across large, ambiguous problem spaces. Your work will span source code analysis, network penetration, and application exploitation. You will design, implement, and execute methodologies for security assessments of critical Amazon systems. Additionally, you will construct security frameworks, runbooks, and rubrics that enable others to apply your work in a repeatable manner. You will be exposed to the full breadth of technology used across Amazon and its subsidiaries, influence security architectures, identify opportunities to centralize security controls across the company, and communicate risks to Senior Executives. As AI accelerates development across Amazon, you will both leverage AI to enhance our audit capabilities and assess the security controls governing its use.

This role requires technical depth, strong security judgment, and the ability to lead projects spanning multiple engineers and teams. You will set a culture of robust security best practices, mentor and develop other security engineers, and drive long-term, measurable security risk reduction while balancing business need and customer experience.


Key job responsibilities
* Lead independent security audits of Amazon systems, services, and infrastructure to assess whether security controls are effective
* Identify security risks through penetration testing, design reviews, threat modeling, and code analysis
* Investigate security control failures - determine why preventive or corrective controls didn't work, and drive root-cause resolution across team boundaries
* Assess security controls around Amazon's adoption of AI/ML technologies - including model access, training data protection, output integrity, and integration into development workflows - to ensure they result in secure customer experiences
* Build reusable security frameworks, runbooks, and rubrics that enable the team to assess new problem domains repeatably and at scale
* Communicate security risk findings and recommendations clearly to technical teams and senior leadership
* Mentor and develop other security engineers; lead engagements requiring coordination across multiple engineers and teams

About the team
Internal Audit Security executes independent assessments of the efficacy of Amazon's layered security controls. We prioritize security assessments of systems and processes that may impact foundational technologies, human safety, privacy and durability of customer data, and financial systems. We believe active tests are required to assess complex environments and emphasize custom tooling to enable safe operation at scale.

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

- 5+ years of industry-based experience in security vulnerabilities identification, attack patterns, and remediation techniques (non-internship) experience
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field
- 5+ 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 as a mentor, tech lead or leading an engineering team
- Experience using standard security assessment and penetration testing tools such as BurpSuite, Metasploit, and IDA Pro
- Experience working directly with security and engineering teams
- Experience in written and verbal communication with the ability to present complex technical information in a clear and concise manner to executives and non-technical leaders
- Demonstrated ability to construct reusable security frameworks, runbooks, or rubrics for complex problem domains

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:

- Domain expertise in at least three of: security architecture and engineering, communication and network security, identity and access management (IAM), security assessment and testing, cryptography, software development security, and reverse engineering
- Vulnerability research experience with complex software and hardware components
- Cloud computing (AWS), virtualization, containerization architecture knowledge
- Experience identifying and driving centralized security controls at the organization or company level
- Experience with microservices, APIs, and distributed systems
- Strong data analysis abilities to derive insights from security signals
- Track record of mentoring or coaching security engineers
- Experience resolving root causes of systemic security problems across team boundaries
- Participation in bug bounty programs
- Experience building scalable, reusable security frameworks and tools
- Web service assessment experience with authentication controls, session management, access controls, logic flaws, injection vulnerabilities, request smuggling, cloud privilege escalation, DOS attacks
- Experience using boto3
- Experience leveraging AI/ML tools to enhance security testing, code analysis, or audit workflows
- Demonstrated ability to navigate ambiguity, make tough technical decisions, build consensus across teams, and drive long-term security initiatives with measurable risk reduction

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, MA, Virtual Location - Massachuset - 178,400.00 - 226,700.00 USD annually
USA, OR, Virtual Location - Oregon - 178,400.00 - 226,700.00 USD annually
USA, WA, Virtual Location - Washington - 178,400.00 - 226,700.00 USD annually