What's a good Amazon position in nyc to apply to for a mid level person whose main experience is c++ and Linux? I'm not too familiar with amazon levels, but it would be like Facebook e5. I saw this one: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/jobs/688968/senior-software-development-engineer Looks okay, just so many choices it's hard to pick. Although experience leading large architecture teams seems like a stretch for me. I didn't think Facebook e5s were leading any teams, much less large ones.
Amazon L6s are the top 5-7% of engineers at the company. As a result, their scope is huge and the expectation is that they can mentor and lead other experienced engineers in large scale system design and architecture. They also need to be coding enough still that they can flawlessly solve Leetcode medium level problems (I.e. lots of clarifying questions, edge case enumeration and testing, correct runtime analysis and optimal solutions). Also you need strong leadership experience to pass behavioral LP rounds in interviews. Marginal results in any of these three areas will result in a downlevel to L5. The result is that external hire of SDEs at L6 level is extremely rare. In the Bay Area, it is almost impossible because anybody who meets those three standards will likely be able to level as senior or staff at Google or E5/E6 at Facebook and beat massively on comp. Basically, if you have to ask "am I an L6" you will clearly be an L5.
That last sentence says it all!
Amazon level 6 is the equivalent of e5 at Facebook?
You may be a senior elsewhere, but at Amazon its a huge huge jump to be hired or promoted as an SDE 3. Based on what you admitted about architecture, you are looking out of your league at Amazon. Look for roles that do not have Senior in them.