Software Development Manager

Job description

DESCRIPTION

Are you ready to deliver features that affect millions of customers? Would you like to point to customer-facing features on one of the most popular websites in the world and say, “I helped built and ship that” after your first few weeks on the job? As a Software Development Manager on the Ask team you will envision and create features that touch every Amazon customer and transform the online shopping experience.

Who you'll work with: The Ask team comprises of two 2-pizza teams that employs lean agile development. We work in two-week iterations and ship code daily. We hate building stuff that customers don't want, so before we invest in large production systems we quickly validate our hypotheses with small tests. We are incredibly close to customers: as an SDM on our team, you will drive core Detail page features, Upper funnel Q&A experiences and build out systems for scale, that must handle a blistering number of transactions per second. We take pride in owning our entire code stack, from how fast our templates render in the customer's browser through to our service layer and down to the underlying data model. We are a diverse team from a variety of backgrounds and interests who love dreaming up, validating, and shipping features that deliver big customer impact.

The problems you'll work on: You will help the engineering team prioritize features and build software that engages the Amazon community to get answers to customer product questions as quickly as possible. Our problem space provides a unique blend of challenges: social features to connect customers to one another, analyzing customer-submitted content using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) techniques and distributed systems to make this content available in real time to our customers.

The ideal candidate will have excellent people management, technical design, program management, problem solving and communication skills and be comfortable interacting with technical and non-technical stakeholders at all levels. In addition, the ability to work backwards and think from a customer perspective is crucial.

You must be able to:
· Drive software development teams on delivering high-quality solutions, and provide guidance regarding architecture, design, and priorities.
· Help identify existing technologies that can be leveraged to meet your team's goals.
· Drive the Ask roadmap for small and large scale projects spanning multiple teams to conclusion
· Clearly communicate vision, project plans and project status to key technical and business stakeholders.
· Establish relationships and interact with Project Sponsors, other SDMs, and development teams to define and deliver complex programs.
· Identify, assess and mitigate risks, provide escalation management, anticipate and make trade offs balancing the business needs versus constraints.

Desired profile

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS

· Bachelor's degree or higher in a technical field (e.g. computer science, engineering), 5+ years of relevant work experience in software development, 3+ years of work experience in technical leadership, program management, or similar roles.
· Excellent people management, program management, problem solving and communication skills; experience in interacting with technical and non-technical stakeholders at all levels.
· Strong software development background designing enterprise level systems with experience in software development, agile methodologies, and in managing and successfully running technical programs.
· Demonstrated ability to self-motivate and follow-through on programs.
· Ability to think both strategically and tactically and to drive execution. Should be equally comfortable with long term planning and day to day progress tracking and execution.
· Proven track record of taking ownership and of delivering results in a fast paced environment, including history of successfully delivering large-scale projects end-to-end.