Software Development Engineer, Humorphic Labs
Amazon · Austin, Texas, USA ·
- Category
- Software engineering
AWS Applied AI Solutions (AAIS) is building toward a future where every business innovates with Amazon AI teammates. To get there, we build AI solutions that improve human capabilities and transform entire business functions. We create end-to-end products that surprise and delight out-of-the-box, making complex things easy and hard things possible, with no cloud experience required. We start with customers who embrace the future and build bridges to meet the rest where they are. We pursue ambitious opportunities with conviction, and we are looking for builders who share that mindset.
Humorphic Labs builds AI systems that work as teammates rather than tools and ships them six months or more ahead of anyone else. The Lab is small on purpose so it can change direction in a day.
Humorphism is the quality of the working relationship between a person and an AI system. It asks whether the system acts proactively, adapts to the person and the situation, earns trust, manages attention, and strengthens human judgment. The work is closing the distance between a tool that a person operates and a teammate that a person collaborates with.
You will start in the Lab and build a capability that does not exist yet. Then you will deploy into the Applied AI Solutions product team that carries it and stay until that product ships it and customers use it. Adoption is yours. Over time the same pattern extends to AWS service teams.
The Lab does not run production at scale. Once a capability proves itself architecture and scaling move to the product team and you return with what you learned.
There is no fixed technology stack. The work leans toward the web frontend because a teammate is judged on the surface where a person meets it and extends to native mobile voice and other modalities as the problem demands. Some of these problems have no known solution today. Multimodality is one.
The Lab is a lead who still writes code an Applied Scientist and engineers. Applied AI Solutions leadership approved it with one instruction - to explore the limits of what we can build - and one number: to ship six or more months ahead of what others can do.
The Applied Scientist owns the hypotheses and the evaluation. You build the systems that test them and the products that carry the ones that survive.
We have a sunset clause. Once a capability is proven and integrated into its product the Lab moves to the next frontier.
Key job responsibilities
• Build AI teammate capabilities in the Lab from a thesis to a working product in line with the Humorphism design philosophy and with guidance from the Lab lead and the Applied Scientist.
• Implement the experiments the Applied Scientist designs and turn research results into working software.
• Deploy into a product team work alongside them and drive your capability into their product.
• Own adoption of what you build. Measure it report it and stay until customers use it.
• Identify where the work breaks down in a host team's hands then correct the cause rather than the symptom.
• Partner with UX designers product teams and other organizations to deliver complete humorphic experiences.
• Transfer architecture and scaling to the product team at the agreed boundary with the documentation and tests that make the transfer safe.
• Contribute your work back into the shared humorphic layer so the next capability starts from a higher floor.
• Learn unfamiliar languages runtimes and problem domains as the work requires.
• Write tested code review the code of others and operate what the Lab runs.
• Present the work to the host team the Lab and SCORE and participate in internal reviews.
A day in the life
Your calendar has two shapes.
In a Lab week you write code most of the day. You take a thesis about how a teammate should behave build the smallest version that tests it and put it in front of a person before the week ends. You sit with a UX designer to work out how the behavior should feel not only what it does.
In a deployed week you sit with the product team carrying your capability. You watch a real user hit the seam between your work and theirs and you fix it that afternoon. Expect occasional travel.
About the team
Amazon values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the preferred qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn't followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don't let it stop you from applying.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. We pioneered cloud computing and never stopped innovating — that's why customers from the most successful startups to Global 500 companies trust our robust suite of products and services to power their businesses.
We value work-life harmony. Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why flexible work hours and arrangements are part of our culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there's nothing we can't achieve in the cloud.
Here at AWS, it's in our nature to learn and be curious. Our employee-led affinity groups foster a culture of inclusion that empower us to be proud of our differences. Ongoing events and learning experiences, including our Conversations on Race and Ethnicity and AmazeCon conferences, inspire us to never stop embracing our uniqueness.
We're continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth's Best Employer. That's why you'll find endless knowledge-sharing, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional.
Humorphic Labs builds AI systems that work as teammates rather than tools and ships them six months or more ahead of anyone else. The Lab is small on purpose so it can change direction in a day.
Humorphism is the quality of the working relationship between a person and an AI system. It asks whether the system acts proactively, adapts to the person and the situation, earns trust, manages attention, and strengthens human judgment. The work is closing the distance between a tool that a person operates and a teammate that a person collaborates with.
You will start in the Lab and build a capability that does not exist yet. Then you will deploy into the Applied AI Solutions product team that carries it and stay until that product ships it and customers use it. Adoption is yours. Over time the same pattern extends to AWS service teams.
The Lab does not run production at scale. Once a capability proves itself architecture and scaling move to the product team and you return with what you learned.
There is no fixed technology stack. The work leans toward the web frontend because a teammate is judged on the surface where a person meets it and extends to native mobile voice and other modalities as the problem demands. Some of these problems have no known solution today. Multimodality is one.
The Lab is a lead who still writes code an Applied Scientist and engineers. Applied AI Solutions leadership approved it with one instruction - to explore the limits of what we can build - and one number: to ship six or more months ahead of what others can do.
The Applied Scientist owns the hypotheses and the evaluation. You build the systems that test them and the products that carry the ones that survive.
We have a sunset clause. Once a capability is proven and integrated into its product the Lab moves to the next frontier.
Key job responsibilities
• Build AI teammate capabilities in the Lab from a thesis to a working product in line with the Humorphism design philosophy and with guidance from the Lab lead and the Applied Scientist.
• Implement the experiments the Applied Scientist designs and turn research results into working software.
• Deploy into a product team work alongside them and drive your capability into their product.
• Own adoption of what you build. Measure it report it and stay until customers use it.
• Identify where the work breaks down in a host team's hands then correct the cause rather than the symptom.
• Partner with UX designers product teams and other organizations to deliver complete humorphic experiences.
• Transfer architecture and scaling to the product team at the agreed boundary with the documentation and tests that make the transfer safe.
• Contribute your work back into the shared humorphic layer so the next capability starts from a higher floor.
• Learn unfamiliar languages runtimes and problem domains as the work requires.
• Write tested code review the code of others and operate what the Lab runs.
• Present the work to the host team the Lab and SCORE and participate in internal reviews.
A day in the life
Your calendar has two shapes.
In a Lab week you write code most of the day. You take a thesis about how a teammate should behave build the smallest version that tests it and put it in front of a person before the week ends. You sit with a UX designer to work out how the behavior should feel not only what it does.
In a deployed week you sit with the product team carrying your capability. You watch a real user hit the seam between your work and theirs and you fix it that afternoon. Expect occasional travel.
About the team
Amazon values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the preferred qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn't followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don't let it stop you from applying.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. We pioneered cloud computing and never stopped innovating — that's why customers from the most successful startups to Global 500 companies trust our robust suite of products and services to power their businesses.
We value work-life harmony. Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why flexible work hours and arrangements are part of our culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there's nothing we can't achieve in the cloud.
Here at AWS, it's in our nature to learn and be curious. Our employee-led affinity groups foster a culture of inclusion that empower us to be proud of our differences. Ongoing events and learning experiences, including our Conversations on Race and Ethnicity and AmazeCon conferences, inspire us to never stop embracing our uniqueness.
We're continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth's Best Employer. That's why you'll find endless knowledge-sharing, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional.