Thirty years of building and leading high performing engineering and science teams including Alexa, Prime and DVD rentals at Amazon. Hyperscaling Alexa and Prime.
View on LinkedInI am a software executive with over 30 years of experience leading engineering, product and machine learning teams, spanning very large teams (over 1000 people), and small teams. Having successfully led product and customer-focused teams through incubator ideas, hyper scaling, large platform migrations, and operating software at scale for low latency and high availability, I have learned a lot about which mechanisms and strategies are most effective in each phase of growth. Throughout my career, I have played a vital role in hiring and developing the right phase-appropriate top-tier people at all levels, including building an organization of the best engineers, machine learning scientists, and speech scientists in the world who came together to build Alexa. Drawing on these firsthand experiences, I now advise executives building and leading engineering, AI and product teams.
I began my career as a Software Engineer working on large-scale, highly available platforms like Nortel's 411 automated directory assistance platform. I joined Amazon in 2004 when it was still in startup mode. I spent 15 years building and leading teams that operated independently within Amazon. I started in the retail organization, then led the DVD Rentals team in Europe. I spent 3 years leading the Prime tech org that saw the re-acceleration of growth and ultimately reached 10 million subscribers in 2011. I then started the Alexa engineering team from scratch, turning an idea for a voice-controlled audio device into a hit product and then guiding the tech organization through hyper-growth.
Unlike traditional roles, you won't find specific courses or university programs teaching you how to become a good leader of technology teams. Spending time with leaders who have been successful is the best way to develop as a leader. I am passionate about solving technology leadership challenges at both hi-tech companies and non-technology companies that are leveraging technology for differentiation and advantage, helping them build high-performing teams and develop strategies for hiring and mentoring outstanding tech talent.
