StoreGen is chartered with supporting Stores teams in their AI-native development journey. Pippin is StoreGen's AI-assisted design and planning tool - the surface where builders plan, write, and collaborate as they build - and it is about to become one of the most widely used internal platforms at Amazon. With Quip's deprecation, Pippin inherits a user base of 384K daily active builders. The Foundation Team is the team that makes Pippin run at that scale.
As its founding SDM, you are not inheriting a steady-state system - you are building a team from scratch at the most consequential moment in Pippin's history. You will own Tier 1 reliability for a platform hundreds of thousands of builders depend on daily, and you will lead your team in experimenting with AI-native approaches to how that platform runs: automating operational workflows, accelerating incident resolution, optimizing cost, and hardening security - not through traditional engineering alone, but by making AI a first-class participant in how the Foundation Team operates. This experimentation mandate is what directly advances StoreGen's AI-native charter and what makes this role different from every other ops-oriented SDM role at Amazon.
You will not be choosing between running a platform and innovating on it. Both are the job - and you will be doing both at a scale few internal tools ever reach.
Key job responsibilities
- Build the Foundation Team. This is a founding role. You will hire, develop, and set the culture and technical bar for a new team of engineers
- Own Tier 1 reliability. You are responsible for the operational health of Pippin at scale - SLA management, incident response, and platform stability for hundreds of thousands of daily active users.
- Lead the Quip migration. You will execute the transition of Quip's user base to Pippin across staggered cohorts, ensuring continuity for builders across Amazon who depend on document collaboration daily.
- Drive platform development. Beyond operations, you will own the roadmap for platform features - reliability improvements, document store architecture, and the core editing and collaboration experience.
- Experiment with AI-native operations. Within your charter, you will lead the team in applying AI to how the platform runs - automating operational workflows, accelerating incident resolution, and exploring how AI changes what it means to operate a production system.
- Partner with the Lab Team. You will work closely with your peer SDM to share on-call responsibility, coordinate on shared platform features, and advance Pippin's AI-native mission together.
About the team
StoreGen collaborates with and supports Stores teams in their AI-native development journey. Pippin is StoreGen's AI-assisted design and planning tool, purpose-built to accelerate builders in the SDLC - from planning and design through execution and review. The Foundation Team is the team that makes sure Pippin runs reliably at the scale that mission demands.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
- 3+ years of engineering team management experience
- 7+ years of engineering experience
- 8+ years of leading the definition and development of multi tier web services experience
- 3+ years of Software Engineer, Software Developer, or related occupational experience
- 1+ years of providing technical leadership and project management for all aspects of the software development lifecycle experience
- 1+ years of developing large-scale, multi-tiered distributed software systems using Java, C#, or C++ experience
- 1+ years of developing large-scale, multi-tiered distributed software systems using service-oriented architecture experience
- 1+ years of developing large-scale, multi-tiered distributed software systems using distributed programming experience
- Bachelor's degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field
- Knowledge of engineering practices and patterns for the full software/hardware/networks development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, certification, and livesite operations
- Experience partnering with product or program management teams
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- 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
- Experience building and managing teams
- Experience applying AI or automation to reduce operational toil or improve system reliability
- Background in developer tooling, document platforms, or collaboration software
- Experience managing through a large-scale system migration or user base transition
The base salary range for this position is listed below. Your Amazon package will include sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs). Final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience, qualifications, and location. Amazon also offers comprehensive benefits including health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans, EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line, Flexible Spending Accounts, Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage), 401(k) matching, paid time off, and parental leave. Learn more about our benefits at https://amazon.jobs/en/benefits.
USA, WA, Seattle - 184,900.00 - 250,200.00 USD annually
