Principal Solutions Architect, AWS Industries - Media & Entertainment, Games and Sports (AWSI-MEGS) - Irvine | Amazon Job

Job Description

Are you a technical leader who thrives on solving complex business and technology challenges? Do you enjoy working directly with senior executives to shape long-term strategies and architect solutions that drive meaningful business outcomes? If so, we want to hear from you.

As a Principal Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services (AWS), you will partner with customers to tackle their most complex problems, designing solutions that balance scalability, security, cost optimization, and performance. You will operate as a trusted advisor to senior leadership, translating business objectives into actionable technology strategies. Your work will span from defining cloud architecture blueprints to influencing product direction based on real customer needs. This is a role where your technical depth, business acumen, and ability to communicate across all levels will directly shape how organizations adopt and succeed with AWS.

Key job responsibilities
- Lead the design of end-to-end cloud solutions for customers, working backward from their business objectives to architect systems that are extensible, secure, reliable, and cost-optimized.
- Serve as a trusted technical advisor by building relationships with customer leadership, understanding their technology challenges, and ensuring short-term decisions align with long-term business outcomes.
- Drive technical solution discussions with customer teams, diving into design choices, best practices, and use cases while proactively identifying and mitigating high-risk or overly complex approaches.
- Develop and deliver technical content such as presentations, workshops, sample code, and white papers to educate customers on cloud strategy and architectural best practices.
- Collaborate with internal teams including sales, professional services, support, and engineering to accelerate solution adoption and contribute reusable reference designs for the broader Solutions Architecture community.
- Stay at the forefront of emerging technology in streaming, media supply chain, and ad tech, including generative AI, so you can keep earning your place as your customers' trusted advisor as their industry evolves.
- Build and showcase hands-on prototypes, demos, and proofs of concept that bring new capabilities to life and shorten the path from idea to production.
- Partner with ISVs and industry partners to shape joint solutions across live streaming, media asset management, and ad delivery and personalization.
- Share your expertise through blogs, conference talks, and industry events, helping AWS stay established as the cloud of choice for media companies looking to grow revenue and modernize their operations.

A day in the life
You might start your morning preparing for a strategy session with a customer's CTO, reviewing their current architecture and identifying areas where AWS services can unlock new capabilities. Later, you could be whiteboarding a solution design with a customer's engineering team, working through trade-offs around reliability and cost. In the afternoon, you might collaborate with AWS product teams to share patterns you've observed across customer engagements, then wrap up by drafting a reference architecture that other Solutions Architects can leverage for similar use cases.

About the team
We're the AWS Media, Entertainment, Games and Sports (MEGS) Solutions Architecture team, and our vision is simple: we meet our customers where they are, design what's next, prove what's possible, and scale what matters for every fan, every story, every screen, and every experience. #InventForFans

We come with a point of view, staying on the frontier of technology and pushing it where it matters most to our customers. We're builders who roll up our sleeves to create demos, proofs of concept, and prototypes, because a working idea beats a slide every time. We collaborate across account teams, specialists, and service teams, acting as the connective tissue that shapes what gets built next. And we scale our thinking, turning what we learn in the field into patterns and reference architectures that the whole industry can use. Every activity backs an outcome for our customers, and we're intentional about the work that matters.

Basic Qualifications:

- 12+ years of specific technology domain areas (e.g. software development, cloud computing, systems engineering, infrastructure, security, networking, data & analytics) experience
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, mathematics or equivalent
- Experience developing technology solutions and evangelising end-to-end technology roadmaps that guide IT transformations toward cloud computing
- Experience communicating across technical and non-technical audiences and at C-level, including training, workshops, publications

Preferred Qualifications:

- Knowledge of distributed systems design and implementation or equivalent
- Knowledge of large scale automation and workflow management or equivalent
- Knowledge of database design and implementation or equivalent
- Knowledge of presentations and whiteboarding skills with a high degree of comfort speaking with internal and external executives, IT management, and developers
- Experience architecting, migrating, transforming or modernizing customer requirements to the cloud
- Familiarity with media, entertainment, gaming, or sports industry workloads
- Domain expertise in one or more areas: media supply chain, streaming, gaming, live broadcast, or sports analytics
- Track record of thought leadership (publications, conference talks)
- Knowledge of software development tools and methodologies

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, East Palo Alto - 210,200.00 - 284,300.00 USD annually
USA, CA, Irvine - 182,800.00 - 247,300.00 USD annually
USA, CA, San Francisco - 210,200.00 - 284,300.00 USD annually
USA, CA, Santa Monica - 182,800.00 - 247,300.00 USD annually