Software Development Manager III, Amazon Now (Project Tez)

Amazon Now (Quick Commerce) is one of Amazon's largest and fastest growing businesses, and Tez CX is the customer experience platform powering it across 8+ global marketplaces including India, MENA, North America, EU, UK, and Japan. Tez CX also powers adjacent businesses beyond quick commerce, including India Fresh and Healthcare, with more programs onboarding as the platform scales. Today the platform handles roughly 0.5MM orders per day and is scaling to 2MM by year end.
As SDM for this role you will lead one of Tez CX's most strategic platform charters. You will build PRISM from grounds up, a platform organization where engineers ship core engineering products with reach across Tez CX tenants and beyond, anchoring the AI native CX layer for every business the platform serves. PRISM owns the foundational layer underneath the entire CX surface, from AI foundational models and scaling and resilience to quality, instrumentation, latency, and the experimentation platform that gates the rate of CX learning. This is the substrate that every customer journey across the platform runs on. The charter is endorsed at senior leadership level with committed headcount and a multi year vision, sized for the trajectory of senior platform leaders.
If you have led platform engineering organizations, can hire and grow strong engineers and managers underneath you, and want to build the AI and engineering foundation underneath one of Amazon's fastest scaling businesses, this is the role.
Key job responsibilities
You will lead PRISM end to end, owning team building, technical strategy, and platform delivery across the full charter. Specifically:
- Stand up the PRISM team. Define team identity and mission, hire engineers and managers across the eight workstream areas, set hiring bar, and grow the team from initial pillar to successful suite of products over horizon.
- Own technical roadmap and strategy across PRISM workstreams, partnering with the Principal Engineer on architecture and technical bets. Drive multi quarter investment plans for AI foundations, scaling and resilience, quality and automation, instrumentation, experimentation, latency and performance, frontend platform, and incident management.
- Anchor the AI native CX layer for the platform. Own AI foundational models, embeddings, ML plumbing, and AI DevOps, ensuring every customer facing AI capability across customer support, payments, post order, search, and personalization builds on a coherent foundation rather than one off launches.
- Build platforms as durable products with internal customers, not as services to a single team. Drive adoption across Tez CX tenants and partner teams across marketplaces and adjacent businesses including India Fresh and Healthcare.
- Run operational excellence for the team. Own oncall, COE follow through, ORR closure, and incident readiness for Tier 1 platform reliability at the 2MM+ OPD scale Amazon Now is scaling to.
- Partner across the leadership stack. Engage with senior engineering and product leaders across customer journey teams, partner marketplaces, and adjacent business orgs to align platform investment with business priorities.
- Develop senior engineers and grow leaders. Coach SDEs, FEEs, TPMs, QAEs, SDETs underneath you, build career growth paths, and grow the next generation of platform leaders.
A day in the life
Your week is split between platform strategy, team building, and execution.
- You spend significant time on the technical roadmap. You are reviewing architecture proposals with your Principal Engineer partner, debating tradeoffs on AI infrastructure investments, deciding which quality and automation bets compound across the charter, and aligning your engineering leads on multi quarter execution plans. You go deep enough into design discussions that engineers on your team know you understand the substance, not just the schedule.
- You spend time hiring. PRISM is being built from ground up, so you are running loops, reviewing bar raiser packets, sourcing senior candidates through your network, and making the calls on who joins. You hold the bar firm and let roles sit open rather than hire below it.
- You partner with your customers. Your customers are 400+ developers, engineering and product leaders across Tez CX customer journey teams, partner marketplaces, and adjacent businesses like India Fresh and Healthcare. A typical week includes syncs with leads in customer support, payments, post order, search, and personalization to align on which AI capabilities they need from PRISM, and conversations with marketplace partners on how PRISM products will reach them.
- You run leadership reviews. You present platform progress in MTRs and weekly reviews with senior engineering and product leadership, and you carry the platform narrative in director and VP forums when the charter touches their priorities.
- You coach. One on ones with your engineers and managers are not just status updates. You are growing senior platform leaders, helping engineers move from feature delivery to platform thinking, and developing the SDMs underneath you into the next layer of the org.
- When incidents happen, you are present. PRISM owns Tier 1 platform reliability and incident management framework, so you are visible in incident calls, drive COE quality, and ensure the team learns from every event.
About the team
PRISM is the platform organization at the heart of Tez CX, owning the cross platform foundation that every customer journey runs on across Amazon Now and adjacent businesses including India Fresh and Healthcare. The team's mission is to build the AI and engineering substrate underneath quick commerce CX, with reach beyond Amazon Now into the broader org.
What makes the team unique:
- We build core engineering products. Latency, performance, quality, instrumentation, AI foundations, and experimentation are shipped as durable platforms with internal customers across the org, not as services to a single team. Engineers here build for reach, not for a single feature roadmap.
- AI is the center of gravity. PRISM owns the AI native CX layer for the platform, and we treat AI as a multi year compounding capability rather than a series of launches. Every customer facing AI capability across the org builds on what PRISM ships.
- We work with senior technical partnership. The charter has a Principal Engineer co owning architecture and technical bets, and senior leadership is invested in growing the team into multiple PODs over the next two to three years.
- We hold the bar. Engineers and managers on the team are hired for platform thinking, not feature delivery. We let roles sit open rather than fill below bar, because the team's identity depends on the calibre of the people building it.
- We are builders. The charter is being stood up from ground up, which means the people who join early shape the culture, the technical direction, and the operating rhythm. There is no playbook to inherit; you write it.
If you want to build platforms that compound, work with senior technical partners, and shape one of the most strategic engineering charters in Amazon's quick commerce business, this is the team
- 3+ years of engineering team management experience
- 10+ years of engineering experience
- 8+ years of leading the definition and development of multi tier web services experience
- 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
- Experience designing or architecting (design patterns, reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems
- 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
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