AWS on-site went decently well, but the recruiter is saying they would rather bring me on as a Systems Development Engineer instead of Software due to my background, interview performance, etc. Can anyone shed any light on the differences in both work duties and potential compensation?
It really depends on the team but these are the common differences across all teams: TLDR: SysDev is kinda of an equivalent of DevOps Engineer/SRE typically works on product deployment automation but not on the product itself. 1. SysDevEngineer is someone who’s specialty is all systems like networking, operating systems, deployment automation where as an SDE is someone who is expected to have an understanding of the above areas but mainly focus on software development. 2. SysDev is expected to build systems that help the service accelerate its deployment processes, region build automations, etc but not expected to build the actual service. Would you get a chance to do that? Mostly no. This is a special role created exclusively for systems and automation as all AWS services have an insane need for it. 3. SysDev is typically paid ~5% < SDE. But if you are a high performer, it makes almost no difference. 4. The workload for SysDev is just as heavy as an SDE and sometimes more (a team generally has only 1-2 SysDevs). But the nature of SysDev work involves mostly scripting and debugging like almost everything in the service. I would like to point out that SysDev is a new role at Amazon. And from my experience, SysDev has decent potential to make bigger and more visible impact than an SDE as they contribute directly to the team’s velocity. The caveat, however, is that as your experience grows and if you choose to stay as a SysDev, your options to move between companies could be affected as not many companies can afford to have SREs. Only the big ones like google, FB, Microsoft etc. But again, at Amazon as a SysDev, you will have the easiest transition path to becoming an SDE compared to other roles.
10/10 helpfulness. Thanks!!!
Hey, It's been late but maybe you can answer the query. How does the role of SysDev and SDE differs for services Like EC2 or VPC as they are more systems oriented. What would be the recommandation for someone who is interested in low level systems development ?
Hi, did you take the offer? Did you try transitioning to SDE role?
Let us know, OP :)
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That means they think that you are smart but are not convinced you can write good code. Or they just need to fill in position of this type. Being system eng also greatly decreases your mobility within the company. Don't agree if you like coding.
isn’t distributed system engineering highly technical? took the class, burned me out.
See how awful Amazon internal tools are? Do you love to fixing long abandoned undocumented tools and going throughout years of ticket backlog? Welcome to Amazon. SysDE has a lower bar than SDE