Positron on Amazon SageMaker

Posit, PBC and the Amazon SageMaker team have published a custom Docker image that runs Positron — Posit's next-generation IDE for Python and R data science — inside Amazon SageMaker Studio and Amazon SageMaker Unified Studio. Status: public preview. The image bundles R, Python (uv), Quarto, Posit professional ODBC drivers, and Posit Assistant backed by Amazon Bedrock. It runs on the customer's SageMaker compute, in the customer's AWS account, under the customer's IAM roles, and requires a Posit Workbench Advanced license entitled through AWS License Manager.

What it is
Product: Positron, a multilingual IDE for Python and R with an agentic assistant, multi-console support, a variables pane, a data viewer, and integrated help.
Delivery mechanism: SageMaker custom image, launched from a JupyterLab Space; Positron starts immediately when the Space launches and is available one click away in the Studio launcher.
Supported environments: SageMaker Studio and SageMaker Unified Studio.
Availability: Public preview, via an active Posit–AWS collaboration.
Bundled components
Positron, running in the browser under SageMaker Studio managed infrastructure, with desktop-equivalent behavior plus SageMaker Spaces benefits.
R, with common packages installed from Posit Package Manager.
uv for Python environment management.
Quarto for authoring and publishing reproducible documents from R and Python.
Posit Assistant, backed by Amazon Bedrock; the customer selects which supported foundation model to use.
Posit professional ODBC drivers, preinstalled and registered, including support for Amazon Athena and Amazon Redshift.
AWS Toolkit extension, AWS CLI, boto3, and AWS SDKs.
Value propositions
Data science teams
Single polished environment for both Python and R, removing the need to switch tools per language.
AI assistance available in the IDE without provisioning separate API keys.
Read from Amazon S3, query Athena or Redshift, and build and deploy models and pipelines from the same coding session.
Reproducible document authoring and publishing through Quarto.
IT and platform teams
Standard SageMaker custom-image lifecycle; no bespoke deployment path.
Credentials are supplied by the Space execution role: the image provides a default AWS profile, so AWS CLI, boto3, SDKs, and the AWS Toolkit extension authenticate automatically.
Access scope is governed entirely by the Space execution role, plus existing IAM and Bedrock model-access controls.
Data and credentials remain in the customer account; the image's only outbound traffic is package downloads.
No separate AI credential store to manage, because Posit Assistant authenticates through the SageMaker execution role.
Business leaders
Open-source data science tooling operationalized on governed, scalable AWS infrastructure.
Licensing reuses AWS License Manager, the same entitlement mechanism already used for RStudio on SageMaker.
Backed by the Posit–AWS Strategic Collaboration Agreement signed in September 2025.
Administrator setup
Pull the published Positron image and push it to a repository in the organization's own Amazon ECR. This copy is mandatory: SageMaker accepts custom images only from an ECR repository in the domain's own region.
Register the image with SageMaker as a custom image and image version, with an app image config.
Attach the image to the Studio domain so it appears as a selectable image.
End users then create a JupyterLab Space, select the Positron image, and launch.
Licensing
Positron as bundled in the Docker image is a Posit commercial product.
Requires a Posit Workbench Advanced license.
Entitlement flows through AWS License Manager; the image includes a licensing client that verifies license availability.
Links
Admin Guide — installation, configuration, licensing
User Guide — getting the most out of Positron on SageMaker
Attach the image to your domain
Positron
Posit Package Manager
Posit professional ODBC drivers
Quarto
Amazon SageMaker
Posit and AWS partnership
Customer references
NASA: NASA's People Analytics Team uses Posit Team with AWS to provide insight for strategic workforce planning.
TruDiagnostic: Adopted Posit Workbench with Amazon SageMaker to give scientists control over computational resources and unify R and Python environments.
About Posit, PBC

Posit, PBC builds open-source and professional software for data science teams using Python and R, including Positron, Posit Workbench, Posit Connect, and Posit Package Manager. Trusted by millions of users and more than half the Fortune 100. Site: https://posit.co