Best time of year to apply for mid-level and above

I don't have a great answer to your question. However, here's my meta-point which is more important:

You're looking for a single job. It's not worth stressing about broader industry trends. Instead, focus on things like:

• Information you discovered about a specific team hiring aggressively.
• A specific person you worked with in the past who is now hiring at a different company.
• Your project just ended or you just got promoted, so it's convenient for you to go on the job hunt.

Woops, I realized there was a very similar question asked here

Unless it's the holiday season, just apply now.

For Big Tech in particular, these companies are so big that there's tons of headcount year-round. Most new grads start in June/July/August (i.e. after graduation), but it's not like all of those headcounts are released in April/May. FAANG is okay waiting many months for a signed offer to actually start at the company, so there's batches of headcount being released constantly. This is very true for Google/Meta who do central pooled hiring.

Once you get to mid-level, it's not even seasonal as you aren't waiting for students to finish school in summer (the most common graduation case). Even more of a reason to just apply ASAP.

You also work at Amazon, so you already have a FAANG company on your resume. Big Tech likes to hire from other Big Tech the most as those are the least risky hires. Unicorns also tend to have a lot of respect for FAANG engineers as they aren't that far apart in terms of culture (i.e. there isn't that big a difference between having 1,000 engineers vs. 10,000 engineers, both orgs will have tons of bureaucracy/politics by then). Every day you aren't applying is a potential day lost not getting a 50%+ raise at Meta/Google.

In summary, just apply in early 2025 if you have spent 1+ years at Amazon, especially if you don't like your current role and can't team switch.