What is the difference between a DevOps engineer and software engineer?

Delivering a software product traditionally involves two phases: developing the software (which is done by software engineers / programmers) and deploying, configuring and maintaining the software (which in a business scenario is usually done by IT Operations personnel). A DevOps role (in general) combines the two by making development-focused engineers work closely with operations-focused engineers as part of a DevOps team. While the two parts of the team have slightly different focus areas and different skill-sets, they seem to carry the same job title, probably in an effort to eliminate any division within the team. However, each organisation has their own definition of what DevOps means, so as other answers have stated, you should ask the recruiter for full details. Edit: http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Visual-Studio-Toolbox/Developers-and-DevOps

It's different everywhere you go, but in my current company it's people who support the software development process in varying ways. Some manage clusters and virtual environments, others are called in to recover data or reconfigure a database after a failure, still others configure unique networking setups or provide guidance on hardware purchases for GPU processing (just as examples), or pretty much anything that the dev engineers require but are not well equipped or familiar enough with to action in a timely manner. When we have some weird database issue or unexpected proxy server behavior or <insert highly specialized configuration of choice> to be done, we call devops. They're our specialists, and they're good at what they do. They're all extremely savvy with shell scripting at a minimum, and most have an additional niche or two of their own. I personally think that spending some time in devops could make you a better, more well-rounded engineer. Your experience may vary.

Thanks for the A2A! As stated elsewhere: devops is many different things, depending on the place. Usually, it's less of a typical deployment rotation on a large software project and more fast-paced work maintaining and building on the glue that allows development and deployment to happen. What specifically they're looking at having you do is anyone's guess, and you definitely should ask your recruiter to put you in touch with someone on your team to get a better sense of it.

DevOps sits on the infrastructure team. It is an engineering/development opportunity, but it will depend on what group you're working with at Amazon as far as what you'd be doing. I know that in Seattle there is a large need for Dev Ops engineers in most companies. The main focus of those roles are to get companies up and running on the cloud. At the end of the day, the best course of action would be to have a conversation with your recruiter and hiring manager to hear how the two roles differ inside of Amazon.

If you want to work for Amazon why do you care what your title is?  If you can't wait a year to switch jobs then you should be looking to work for a startup and not an enterprise.  Enterprises move slowly, have rules and create crazy titles.  You may not be interviewing well enough for them to offer you a Software Engineer position.  Get your foot in the door and figure out what you really want to do.  That's what is called a career path.

This hinges 100% on Amazon's own definition and expectations of a DevOps engineer. You should clarify with your recruiter the roles and responsibilities expected of you.