Amazon has levels of developer (SDE 1,2,3, P.Eng, Sr P.Eng, Distinguished Eng.). If you've been in industry for 10 years or more, they'll only consider you for

Amazon has levels of developer (SDE 1,2,3, P.Eng, Sr P.Eng, Distinguished Eng.). If you've been in industry for 10 years or more, they'll only consider you for an SDE3 role or higher- which is a very hard interview. So yes, Amazon does hire some older distinguished engineers and principal engineer, but if you aren't at that level, they aren't interested in you. Is that fair? Maybe. But they also don't fire engineers who never get promoted past SDE2. Source: gave 60+ interviews for Amazon while I worked there.