Amazon Software Engineer Career Ladder & Salary Ranges

by Josh Doody

This is a high-level overview of the Amazon Software Engineering career ladder and associated salary ranges from entry-level (L4) up to “Distinguished Engineer” (L10). The compensation numbers will be pretty round when mentioned, and I’ll just talk about “total comp”, which is base salary, sign-on bonuses, and vesting equity for each year. The numbers are mostly focused on the US market.

For a closer look at Amazon job offers, their individual components, and how to negotiate them see How to negotiate an Amazon job offer.

Amazon career ladder overview

On one hand, career progression for Software Engineers at Amazon is pretty straightforward: L3 -> L4 -> L5 -> L6 -> L7 -> L8 -> L9 -> L10. Easy!

But while that progression may look linear and straightforward, it most definitely is not. For example, there is no L9, and the “gap” between some of those levels is much larger than it is between other levels.

So let’s walk through the different levels and how to climb the Software Engineer career ladder at Amazon.

L3 (Hourly, unlikely for SWEs)

I’m including L3 just because it exists, but it’s mostly hourly employees who may not be on a formal career ladder or career path. The L4 level is where the more traditional career ladder starts at Amazon.

L4 (SDE I, recent college graduates)

This is considered entry-level at Amazon. Of course “entry-level at Amazon” is a little different than a typical entry-level Software Engineer. Most L4s will have some career experience—one to four years or so—somewhere else before joining Amazon.

They do sometimes make offers to fresh-out-of-undergrad Software Engineers, but this is the exception and not the rule. And some folks will move from an internship at Amazon to an L4 role, but this is pretty rare as well.

Usually, an L4 at Amazon will be a new-hire with some sort of related career experience.

As an L4, you can expect to be challenged technically and as you learn to operate in the Amazonian way. That means you’ll start to see the Leadership Principles in practice and learn how to operate in a giant tech company that works efficiently in silos.

Total compensation will likely be in the low six figures (above $100,000 and into the low $200,000 range at the top of the pay band).

L5 (SDE II, Managers)

This is considered more experienced than entry-level, but still not “Senior”. Hence “SDE II”.

The difference between L4 and L5 is mostly experience and pay. The work will be similarly challenging, and you will be expected to work more independently than an L4.

There are also lots of L5s in general because there are so many managers at that level. This is due to a combination of three factors: 1) At Amazon, a Manager can manage others who are at or below their level, 2) There are a lot of L3/L4/L5 ICs to manage and 3) it is generally difficult to get promoted from L5 to L6.

So L5 is a sort of training ground for engineers who want to advance within Amazon, and you may be “stuck” here for a while. Jumping from L5 to L6 is one of the bigger jumps in Amazon, and it will require help from your manager and your own work results.

The pay difference from L4 to L5 is meaningful wit a range going from around mid-$200,000 to mid-$300,000.

L6 (Senior SDE, Managers)

This is the first time “Senior” shows up in your job title, and that signifies a large and meaningful jump up from L5. Don’t think of L6 as an automatic advancement after some time passes. Think of it instead as more of a reward for doing great work at Amazon, being noticed for that work, and having your manager advocate for you and even jump through some hoops to get you promoted.

Getting promoted to L6 is a big deal at Amazon.

L6 is also where a lot of external Principal and Staff Engineers come into Amazon. They’re more likely to down-level you to L6 than to bring you in as an L7 unless you were already at a similar level in a previous role (equivalent to Sr. Staff- or Director-level IC at other big tech companies).

Like L5, this is a level where there is a glut of people because of the difficulty of moving up from this level (the gap from L6 to L7 is even bigger than the gap from L5 to L6) and because so many external hires are brought in here. Amazon expects lots of Engineers to stop or stall at this level.

The pay range makes a pretty big jump in line with the prestige and expectations of the level as well. The range both moves up and widens to $300,000 and into the $500,000+ range for some folks. It’s a very wide pay range, which is pretty common at most big tech companies as you move up the career ladder.

L7 (Principal SDE)

Getting to L7 is also very difficult. The higher up you advance, the more your promotion prospects are dependent on your managers and their managers. Not only do you have to be doing L7-type work for a while, but your manager and your skip-level manager need to be advocating for you to be promoted and they have to have enough political capital to make it happen.

It’s not enough to do great work. It’s not enough for your manager and skip-level manager to recognize that you’re doing great work. Those things have to be true and your manager and skip-level have to have enough pull to get you promoted to this level.

But once you’re there, you have some pretty big opportunities to get paid very well and to see other opportunities that you might be able to advance to over time. This is sort of a bridge level: very difficult to get to, and right below a high-level, autonomous role that will pay you extremely well and give you agency to work on any number of projects that you’re interested in.

Once you’ve moved up to L7, the pay range takes a nice jump into the $550,000–$750,000 range and possibly higher if Amazon’s stock is doing well.

L8 (Some executives, Director, General Manager, Senior Principal SDE)

Now we’re getting into “big tech is different” territory. L8 would basically be a VP at most other companies, but not at Amazon. In some instances, L8 will be considered an executive (which may include a staff) and in other parts of the organization, L8 is a very, very senior IC or leader.

L8s can sort of do whatever they want, especially on the individual contributor side. Pick an interesting problem, and work on it. Talk to other L8s about what they’re doing.

This is the first role where “Make a million dollars a year” is a thing. The pay range is extremely wide going from around $750,000 up to $1,000,000+. This is where pay ranges become more like guidelines than boxes—they are very fuzzy and situationally dependent.

This is true for most very big organizations: Once you get up into the narrower part of the org chart, pay ranges become extremely fuzzy. They are less about “market data” and more about the specific individual, their role, the company’s needs, and how unique the combination of all those factors is.

For extremely senior roles like this, I often ask my clients, “How many people in the world can do this job for this company?” It’s usually a small number (rarely as high as 50, often below 20, sometimes fewer than 10).

Then I ask them, “And how many of those people are available right now?” Sometimes the answer is, “Only me, as far as I know.”

So when a company is trying to determine how to compensate an individual who will be leading a part of the company that generates gobsmacking amounts of revenue, and that individual is one of very few people available to lead that part of the organization, the conversation is not about the person’s market value but about organizational value and what number each party feels is appropriate.

When I’m negotiating with clients at this level of a big company, it’s more like a conversation around creative ways to compensate the person for the value they bring than a negotiation around pay ranges.

L9

This level doesn’t exist, for now. It could be a placeholder for future roles (although I’m not sure how much bigger Amazon would need to get before they decide to start leveraging this placeholder), or might be used as a sort of hard line between Amazon VPs-and-above and everyone else.

L10 (VP, Distinguished Engineer)

This is a VP-level role at Amazon.

While the L9 gap isn’t totally understood, it is a good symbol of how difficult it is to get to L10 at Amazon. They prefer to bring in external candidates for levels above L8, and it’s possible L9 also serves as a sort of wedge to facilitate that hiring preference. It’s extremely difficult to get promoted from L8, over the invisible L9 barrier, to L10, so most of the people who end up in L10 are hired into that role.

For those who are an L8 at Amazon and hoping to be promoted to L10, there is no fast track to L10—it’s all about time with the company and scope of work, which is a nicer way of saying “it’s all about who you know” and to be a bit more crass, “how much money you’ve made for Amazon”.

There are so few L10 roles that they are coveted, which means there is a lot of competition for them. To win that competition and jump from L8 over the L9 barrier to L10, you have to put your time in, work on interesting and various projects, know the right people, and be lucky enough to work on a project that brings in a lot of money.

Even if you were an L8 who did great work on a good project, if that project didn’t generate a lot of revenue for Amazon, it just won’t be weighted as heavily as a money-making project when they are considering folks to be promoted to L10.

To use a round number, the compensation for L10 roles starts at $1,000,000 a year and goes up from there. There may be some L10s below the seven-figure mark, but not many and not far below it.

Amazon Leadership Principles

If you are interviewing for a job at Amazon or already work there, you should be very familiar with their Leadership Principles.

Up through L6 or so, you will be evaluated on the Amazon Leadership Principles, but mostly in a “where do you have room for development?” kind of way. In other words, you may feel that the Leadership Principles are used as a gate to slow your career progression.

This may show up in performance reviews via “Forte” (their anonymous performance review platform) as “you could work on [Leadership Principle]…” type of feedback.

But for L8 and beyond, that sort of flips so that you may feel the Leadership Principles are used less frequently, but their use is more focused on highlighting things you do well and to highlight your work.

In “Forte”, this might look more like “You really excelled at [Leadership Principle]…”

Management structure

This article is about the Software Engineering career ladder, but of course there is also a “management” career ladder. One thing to note is that one might manage someone at the same level, but not a higher level. L5s may manage other L5s and below, L6s may manage other L6s and below, etc.

The highest level where you’ll see a traditional managerial role is L7. Above that—starting with L8—people don’t really have traditional managers because they are reporting into a VP or another very senior person. L8 and above have so many people in their “downline” that they cannot possibly manage their downline through a traditional “manager of a team” arrangement.

Summary

I began this article with a simplified view of the Software Engineer career ladder at Amazon, and here’s an updated summary that more accurately reflects the career ladder:

L3 (Hourly, unlikely for SWEs) ->
L4 (SDE I, recent college graduates) ->
L5 (SDE II, Managers) ->
[big jump]
L6 (Senior SDE, Managers) ->
[difficult jump, requires managerial help]
L7 (Principal SDE) ->
L8 (Some executives, Director, General Manager, Senior Principal SDE) ->
L9 (placeholder) ->
[huge jump, mostly external hires]
L10 (VP, Distinguished Engineer)

And here’s what the total comp looks like for each of those levels (these are ballpark numbers to keep things simple):

L3 (hourly) ->
L4 ($100k–$200k) ->
L5 ($250k–$350k) ->
L6 ($300k–$500k+) ->
L7 ($550k–$750k) ->
L8 ($750k–$1MM) ->
L9 (N/A) ->
L10 ($1MM+)