Sr. Technical Program Manager - Alexa Shopping Product Advisor

Job description

DESCRIPTION

‘Product Advisor’ is our effort within Alexa Shopping to make Alexa the world’s most knowledgeable expert on all products and services, helping customers with all their purchasing needs. Our vision for Alexa is to help customers, as their favourite Product Advisor, in their home (e.g. via Echo Family Devices), on Amazon (e.g. on the Amazon mobile app or Desktop), and on the go, in all stages of their shopping journey. This includes providing inspiration and assisting in product discovery, where customers’ specific needs are not crystallised yet (“What are the best noise cancelation headphones?”) and offering proactive help, where Alexa can predict customers’ needs (“There is a new answer to a question you asked on Amazon”).

The Contextual Product Q&A team in London is looking for a strongly technical, customer-focused Senior Technical Program Manager with a start-up mentality and skills that span software engineering, research science, program management, and strategic vision.

In this role you will be responsible for scoping and delivering large programs end-to-end to enable customers to have natural, engaging conversations with Alexa about products they have discovered or about to buy.

Responsibilities include collection of business and systems requirements, writing specifications, driving project schedules from design to release, and managing the production launch. You will lead and coordinate design and implementation efforts between teams across Amazon to develop optimal solutions for new features, verticals, and marketplaces. You will be expected to make appropriate trade-offs to optimize time-to-market, clearly communicate goals, roles, responsibilities, and desired outcomes to internal cross-functional and remote project teams.

As a Sr Technical Program Manager you will:
· Work closely with Software Managers, Product Managers, Engineers and scientists to drive architecture, engineering, product designs, decisions, and timelines.
· Develop and execute project plans and run the day-to-day Agile project activities across the Contextual Q&A group
· Own the stakeholder relationships with the group's customers and dependencies.
· Assess and mitigate risks, anticipate bottlenecks, provide escalation management, anticipate and make trade-offs, and balance business needs versus technical constraints to optimise risk taking and maximise business benefit.
· Drive communication, collaboration, and commitment across multiple disparate stakeholders with competing priorities.
· Report on development status, quality, operations, and system performance.
· Communicate in person and writing to technical staff and management up to the VP level.
· Mentor and coach technical staff of on good communication and project management skills.
· Tackle challenging, novel situations every day. Along the way, we guarantee that you’ll learn a lot, have fun and make a positive impact on millions of people.
Amazon is an equal opportunities employer. We believe passionately that employing a diverse workforce is central to our success. We make recruiting decisions based on objective criteria including your experience and skills. We value your passion to discover, invent, simplify and build. We welcome applications from all sections of society irrespective of colour, race, religion or belief, nationality, ethnic or national origin, gender, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, sex, marital status, disability, age or trade union membership. Please let us know if you have any special requirements in relation to this recruitment process.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

· A deep understanding of software development in a team, and a track record of shipping software on time.
· Strong sense of ownership, urgency, and drive, and a track record of delivery.
· Passion for building new products in a fast paced, team-oriented environment.
· Experience in development of distributed, scalable systems and high-volume transaction applications.

#stpm
#techleaders

Desired profile

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS

· Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, or equivalent.
· 5+ years of industry experience in planning, tracking, and delivering software applications.
· 3+ years' experience managing complex technology projects.
· Experience with project delivery for large, cross functional projects.
· Experience managing projects and teams in an Agile environment.
· Excellent verbal and written communication skills; ability to simplify complex topics for broad audiences, both business and technical teams.
· Capable of taking initiative and working with minimal direction; a self-starter even when assignments are vague or undefined.
· High attention to detail and proven ability to manage multiple, competing priorities in a fast-paced environment.