Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a broad set of global compute, storage, database, analytics, application, and networking services that help organizations move faster, lower IT costs, and scale applications. Our services are trusted by the largest enterprises and the hottest startups to power a wide variety of workloads.

AWS Direct Connect is a networking service that provides an alternative to using the internet to connect to AWS. Using AWS Direct Connect, data that would have previously been transported over the internet is delivered through a private network connection between customer on-premises and AWS.

The AWS Direct Connect team delivers solutions that make it easy for customers to establish a dedicated network connection from their premises to the AWS cloud. These connections help to reduce network costs, increase bandwidth throughput, and provide a more consistent network experience than Internet-based connections. Direct Connect is currently available in more than 100 locations in 31 countries around the globe.

We are looking for an exceptional software leader to join us in our Seattle, Washington Development Center to define and build the next generation of the AWS Direct Connect service.

The opportunity:
The ideal candidate is a seasoned, mature engineering leader who is comfortable building high performing teams and developing staff. The ideal candidate prioritizes well, communicates clearly, and understands how to drive a high level of focus and excellence with a strong team.

Candidates must have a proven track record of building a culture centered on customer focus, efficient execution, high quality, rigorous testing, deep monitoring, and solid deployment practices. AWS in general, and this business in particular, operates at very large scale and on critical workloads, so a passion and discipline around operational excellence is essential. Candidates must be comfortable with ambiguity and eager to embrace ownership and accountability.

Leading teams in this type of fast-paced environment requires a high degree of autonomy and provides a wide range of opportunities to influence the productivity and morale of your teams. Attitude and work ethic is a key ingredient of success in this role: the successful candidate will be expected to wear many hats, work fast and smart, and adapt and iterate quickly. A working knowledge of, and experience with, one or more development methodologies is essential.

Sound like a fit? Read on…
The team is a balanced mix of senior and junior engineers that has proven it can deliver very important features for our customers. You will be responsible for building and managing multiple agile software teams in a fast-paced engineering environment that values high-quality software design and rapid iteration. Your teams will have ownership of the systems used to build and configure routers, the systems used to provision, and software-defined networking technology stacks.

You will leverage your experience with distributed systems and networking to define and build secure, reliable, scalable, fast, cost-effective, and easy-to-use networking solutions that bring the cloud closer to our ever-expanding customer base. You will own staffing and managing the team, setting the team culture, driving the adoption of best practices, and planning and delivering on the product roadmap. You will help identify ambitious goals for adoption, operational performance, and delivery.

To be successful in this role you will need an established background in managing and leading software teams, interacting with customers, and building web-scale distributed systems and networks. You will need strong customer relationship skills, including the ability to discover the true requirements underlying internal and external customers’ feature requests.

As the leader of the Direct Connect back-end software team, you will have the opportunity to:

• Have fun and create a fun environment. Our company credo is “Work hard. Have fun. Make history”. The right candidate will love what they do and instinctively know how to make work fun. Enjoy being a really great people manager. Building, motivating and mentoring a world-class systems and software engineering teams is the most important part of this role. You should have a proven track record in recruiting and retaining top talent and you must be awesome at day-to-day people and performance management tasks.
• Enjoy building large scale distributed software systems. Drive the development of software framework that allows AWS and Amazon retail systems and other mission critical workloads to function without interruption. Identify areas of improvement in our existing frameworks, tool, and processes and strive to make them better. You will enjoy keeping your technical skills reasonably current and can contribute meaningfully to architecture discussions.
• Have strong project management experience. The successful candidate will partner with Product Managers to create product roadmaps for the team. This will include helping innovate and inventing new value-added services. You will need excellent technical project management skills to deliver product roadmap items as well as other cross-team projects. Experience with Agile methodologies is a highly preferred plus.
• Know how to run a tight, lean, efficient operation. The right candidate will want to measure everything and be very data driven. He/she will excel at using metrics, monitoring and alarming to measure and improve the operational processes and performance of the team.

This position has a high level of visibility so you will need to be a strong leader, and be able to communicate clearly and compellingly at all levels of the company.

• 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 committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or other legally protected status. For individuals with disabilities who would like to request an accommodation, please visit https://www.amazon.jobs/en/disability/us.

Our compensation reflects the cost of labor across several US geographic markets. The base pay for this position ranges from $148,000/year in our lowest geographic market up to $287,700/year in our highest geographic market. Pay is based on a number of factors including market location and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Amazon is a total compensation company. Dependent on the position offered, equity, sign-on payments, and other forms of compensation may be provided as part of a total compensation package, in addition to a full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits. For more information, please visit https://www.aboutamazon.com/workplace/employee-benefits. Applicants should apply via our internal or external career site.