Senior ML Software Engineer, Data Plane
AWS — The world's largest cloud platform
About the role
The MLIL DataPlane team is looking for a Senior Software Development Engineer to own the design and implementation of our inference data plane. We build the software that makes large models run efficiently on custom hardware - spanning model execution, memory management, data movement, and serving integration. Our work covers the full inference path: integrating serving engines with custom hardware, developing high-performance compute kernels, enabling efficient data movement, and driving models from early validation through production. We operate at frontier scale with large distributed models. This is a ground-up effort with rapidly evolving hardware and software. We need a senior IC who can write and optimize low-level code for custom hardware, validate model architectures end-to-end, build test and profiling infrastructure, and drive performance across the stack. Key job responsibilities - Develop and optimize compute kernels for a custom ML accelerator architecture, targeting production-level performance for large language model inference. - Implement and validate LLM architectures end-to-end - from PyTorch model definition through distributed execution on custom hardware. - Integrate custom accelerator backends into open-source ML serving frameworks (vLLM, PyTorch), including scheduler extensions, memory management, and model parallelism. - Build and maintain test infrastructure for model correctness validation across CPU, GPU, simulator, and hardware targets. - Profile and optimize inference workloads - identify bottlenecks, instrument critical paths, and drive latency and throughput improvements from simulation through hardware bringup. - Own features end-to-end: from design through implementation, testing, and integration into the broader software stack. - Contribute to CI/CD pipelines that gate model and kernel changes on correctness and performance regressions. - Mentor engineers, drive design reviews, and raise the engineering bar across the team.
- Bachelor's degree in computer science or equivalent - 7+ years of full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, and operations experience - Strong proficiency in C/C++ - Strong Linux systems knowledge - Experience developing compute kernels for GPUs, DSPs, or custom accelerators - Proven track record of owning and delivering complex software features end-to-end
What the index says about this role
- First seen by JobLarper — Aug 7, 2026 (today). Still inside the window where applications get read by a human rather than a pile.
- No pay range in our index for this listing. Across 1,685 indexed Software Engineer roles in US that do publish one, the middle half sits between $185k and $285k, median $225k — JobLarper's read of the market, not a figure from AWS.
- What Software Engineer roles ask for — across 10,230 indexed openings: REST/APIs (46%), Backend (42%), Cloud (38%), Python (38%), Go (25%). This posting names Backend, AI/LLM, ML.
- AWS is hiring actively — 219 open roles indexed.
Derived from the 27,000 roles JobLarper indexes daily from official company boards — not from the job description above.
More open roles at AWS
- Software Development Engineer, KiroPortland, Oregon, USA · Mid
- Software Development Engineer, KiroSeattle, Washington, USA · Mid
- Software Development Engineer, KiroSeattle, Washington, USA · Mid
- Software Development Engineer, AWS Route 53 Global Resolver, AWS Route 53 Global ResolverHerndon, Virginia, USA · Mid
- Software Development Engineer, AWS Route 53 Global Resolver, AWS Route 53 Global ResolverHerndon, Virginia, USA · Mid
- Software Development Engineer – Big Data, AWS Elastic MapReduce (EMR), EMR EKSEast Palo Alto, California, USA · Mid
- Sr. Software Development Engineer, AWS Marketplace Buyer FulfillmentNew York, New York, USA · Senior+
- Software Development Engineer, Amazon Connect CustomerNew York, New York, USA · Mid
Similar Software Engineer roles at other companies
- Software Engineer, Google Cloud StorageGoogle · Raleigh, NC, USA · 4325 Glenwood Ave #1047k, Raleigh, NC 27612, USA · Durham, NC, USA
- Senior Software Engineer, Search Quality, AI/MLGoogle · New York, NY, USA
- Senior Software Engineer, Network InfrastructureGoogle · Sunnyvale, CA, USA
- Software Engineer, Early Career, CampusGoogle · Mountain View, CA, USA · Google Building 1395, 1395 Charleston Rd, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA · Cambridge, MA, USA
- Software Engineer, Security Command CenterGoogle · Kirkland, WA, USA
- Software Engineer III, Embedded Systems/Firmware, Power OptimizationGoogle · —
- Lead Software Engineer - O9 , ITCNike · Karnataka, India
- Senior Software Engineer, Global Converse, ITCNike · Karnataka, India
Browse all software engineer jobs in united states — 5,560 open roles across 845 companies.