Software Development Manager Jobs in Santa Clara, CA
Software Development Manager jobs in Santa Clara are concentrated in the Central Expressway corridor, the Lawrence Expressway tech belt, and the downtown core, with strong demand across semiconductor platforms, enterprise cloud infrastructure, and consumer electronics software. Employers hiring right now include Amazon, Amazon Web Services, and NVIDIA. Scan the live roles below and apply to whichever ones fit.
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DESCRIPTION
As a Software Development Manager on the AWS IAM Access Analyzer team, you'll lead a team building the next-generation internal access analysis platform that evaluates IAM policies at massive scale to surface security findings for AWS customers. Your systems power automated reasoning about permissions, resource configurations, and access patterns, helping customers identify overly permissive access and unused credentials before they become security incidents.
This is a deeply technical team operating at the intersection of distributed systems, automated reasoning, and cloud security. The ideal candidate sets a high engineering bar, drives operational excellence across tier-0 infrastructure, and works backwards from customer needs to deliver meaningful security outcomes. If you're passionate about building systems that make the cloud more secure by default, this is the role for you.
Key job responsibilities
- Define and execute the product and architecture strategy for large-scale access analysis, including finding generation, resource configuration ingestion, and cost estimation
- Drive customer-facing impact by working backwards from enterprise customer needs (financial services, large tech companies) to simplify how they discover and remediate security risks
- Own system reliability, scalability, and operational metrics for services that process billions of policy evaluations across AWS accounts
- Build and maintain integrations with internal platforms (Trellis, EventBridge, Config) to expand coverage and deliver findings to customers through multiple channels
- Proactively identify risks, mitigate them before they become roadblocks, and exercise sound judgment on when and how to escalate to senior leadership
- Set team strategy and be accountable for team plans, execution, and deliverables, ensuring consistent, high-quality outcomes
- Collaborate cross-functionally with product management, solutions architects, and AWS service teams to align on priorities and drive adoption
- Leverage AI tooling to improve engineering productivity, automate workflows, and raise the bar on operational efficiency
- Grow and develop a strong, healthy, and diverse team through strategic hiring, mentoring, and coaching
About the team
The Citadel team sits within AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), building the next-generation internal access analysis platform. We help AWS customers continuously evaluate their IAM policies and resource configurations to identify overly permissive access, unused credentials, and potential security risks at scale. Our work combines distributed systems engineering with automated reasoning to deliver security insights that protect millions of AWS accounts. We value strong ownership, operational rigor, and a culture of working backwards from customer outcomes.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
- 3+ years of engineering team management experience
- 7+ years of working directly within engineering teams experience
- 3+ years of designing or architecting (design patterns, reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems experience
- 8+ years of leading the definition and development of multi tier web services experience
- Knowledge of engineering practices and patterns for the full software/hardware/networks development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, certification, and livesite operations
- Experience partnering with product or program management teams
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Experience in communicating with users, other technical teams, and senior leadership to collect requirements, describe software product features, technical designs, and product strategy
- Experience in recruiting, hiring, mentoring/coaching and managing teams of Software Engineers to improve their skills, and make them more effective, product software engineers
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.
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, Santa Clara - 212,700.00 - 287,700.00 USD annually
DESCRIPTION
As a Software Development Manager on the AWS IAM Access Analyzer team, you'll lead a team building the next-generation internal access analysis platform that evaluates IAM policies at massive scale to surface security findings for AWS customers. Your systems power automated reasoning about permissions, resource configurations, and access patterns, helping customers identify overly permissive access and unused credentials before they become security incidents.
This is a deeply technical team operating at the intersection of distributed systems, automated reasoning, and cloud security. The ideal candidate sets a high engineering bar, drives operational excellence across tier-0 infrastructure, and works backwards from customer needs to deliver meaningful security outcomes. If you're passionate about building systems that make the cloud more secure by default, this is the role for you.
Key job responsibilities
- Define and execute the product and architecture strategy for large-scale access analysis, including finding generation, resource configuration ingestion, and cost estimation
- Drive customer-facing impact by working backwards from enterprise customer needs (financial services, large tech companies) to simplify how they discover and remediate security risks
- Own system reliability, scalability, and operational metrics for services that process billions of policy evaluations across AWS accounts
- Build and maintain integrations with internal platforms (Trellis, EventBridge, Config) to expand coverage and deliver findings to customers through multiple channels
- Proactively identify risks, mitigate them before they become roadblocks, and exercise sound judgment on when and how to escalate to senior leadership
- Set team strategy and be accountable for team plans, execution, and deliverables, ensuring consistent, high-quality outcomes
- Collaborate cross-functionally with product management, solutions architects, and AWS service teams to align on priorities and drive adoption
- Leverage AI tooling to improve engineering productivity, automate workflows, and raise the bar on operational efficiency
- Grow and develop a strong, healthy, and diverse team through strategic hiring, mentoring, and coaching
About the team
The Citadel team sits within AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), building the next-generation internal access analysis platform. We help AWS customers continuously evaluate their IAM policies and resource configurations to identify overly permissive access, unused credentials, and potential security risks at scale. Our work combines distributed systems engineering with automated reasoning to deliver security insights that protect millions of AWS accounts. We value strong ownership, operational rigor, and a culture of working backwards from customer outcomes.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
- 3+ years of engineering team management experience
- 7+ years of working directly within engineering teams experience
- 3+ years of designing or architecting (design patterns, reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems experience
- 8+ years of leading the definition and development of multi tier web services experience
- Knowledge of engineering practices and patterns for the full software/hardware/networks development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, certification, and livesite operations
- Experience partnering with product or program management teams
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Experience in communicating with users, other technical teams, and senior leadership to collect requirements, describe software product features, technical designs, and product strategy
- Experience in recruiting, hiring, mentoring/coaching and managing teams of Software Engineers to improve their skills, and make them more effective, product software engineers
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.
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, Santa Clara - 212,700.00 - 287,700.00 USD annually
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Find JobsSoftware Development Manager Job Market in Santa Clara
Who's Hiring
- Amazon103
- Amazon Web Services86
- NVIDIA34
- Fortinet34
- AMD26
Top Industries Hiring
- Technology & Software60
- Retail34
- E-Commerce & Online Marketplaces34
- Distribution & Wholesale26
- Science & Research17
Software Development Manager Jobs in Santa Clara: Frequently Asked Questions
How do I get a software development manager job in Santa Clara?
Focus your search on Santa Clara's semiconductor firms, cloud infrastructure companies, and enterprise software developers clustered along the Central Expressway and Lawrence Expressway corridors. Employers here prioritize candidates who have led engineering teams building at scale, with direct experience in agile delivery and roadmap ownership. A background in hardware-adjacent software or platform engineering gives a meaningful edge in this market compared to candidates with purely web-product experience.
Which companies hire software development managers in Santa Clara?
Employers hiring software development managers in Santa Clara right now include Amazon, Amazon Web Services, and NVIDIA, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of August 2026. Santa Clara's employer mix skews heavily toward semiconductor companies, networking hardware firms, and large-scale cloud infrastructure providers, many of which maintain their global engineering headquarters in the city.
Are there remote software development manager jobs in Santa Clara?
Yes, though software development manager roles are moderately remote-friendly given the coordination and team-leadership demands that often require in-person presence. About 50% of software development manager openings tied to Santa Clara are remote or hybrid as of August 2026, with hybrid arrangements being far more common than fully remote. Strategic planning, cross-team roadmapping, and stakeholder communication tend to be the functions most compatible with remote work in Santa Clara.
How can I get a software development manager job in Santa Clara with little or no experience?
The most realistic entry path in Santa Clara is transitioning from a senior software engineering role into a team lead or engineering lead position at one of the city's mid-size semiconductor or cloud infrastructure firms, which often promote internally before posting externally. Targeting roles titled engineering lead, technical lead, or staff engineer at Santa Clara companies gives you direct exposure to people management without requiring prior management titles, and those lateral moves frequently convert into formal manager tracks within one to two years.
Which industries hire the most software development managers in Santa Clara?
Santa Clara software development manager roles concentrate in Technology & Software, Retail, and E-Commerce & Online Marketplaces, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of August 2026. Santa Clara's position as the physical center of Silicon Valley means those sectors are represented here by company headquarters, core R&D divisions, and large engineering campuses rather than satellite offices, which drives consistent and high-volume hiring demand.
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