Senior Engineering Manager, Strands, AWS Velocity Labs

Strands Agents is AWS's open source SDK for building production AI agents — a model-driven framework downloaded over 14 million times. We are looking for a Senior Software Development Manager to lead the Strands team, own the technical strategy, scale the engineering organization, and grow the open source community. This is a high-visibility role at the intersection of AI/ML innovation, developer tools, and open source — you'll define how AWS enables developers worldwide to build autonomous AI agents.

- Lead the vision and execution for the Strands Agents SDK
- Build and scale a world-class engineering team delivering the core agentic loop, multi-agent orchestration, and observability
- Drive open source community growth, partner engagement, and ecosystem expansion
- Represent Strands to customers, partners, and developers

Key job responsibilities
- Own the roadmap, delivery, and operations for the Strands Agents SDK spanning the agentic loop, tool ecosystem, multi-agent orchestration, observability, and deployment patterns.
- Build, mentor, and scale a high-performing engineering organization, fostering a culture of ownership, technical excellence, and speed.
- Drive open source community strategy including contributor experience, governance, ecosystem expansion (MCP servers, model providers, integrations).
- Partner with senior leaders across AWS (Kiro, Amazon Quick, Bedrock, SageMaker) and external partners (Anthropic, Meta) to align roadmaps and co-develop capabilities.
- Set and raise the technical bar — establish AI-assisted development workflows, drive architectural decisions, and ensure the framework remains model-driven and developer-friendly.
- Drive executive alignment through VP-level reviews, PR/FAQs, and strategic narratives positioning Strands within AWS's broader AI strategy.
- Champion production readiness — own deployment toolkits, reference architectures, and observability patterns that take agents from prototype to production.
- Represent Strands externally at conferences, in blog posts, and through direct customer engagement.

A day in the life
You'll split your time between strategic leadership and hands-on technical engagement. Mornings might include reviewing community PRs and contributor roadmaps, followed by architecture deep-dives with your engineering leads on multi-agent orchestration. Afternoons could involve partnering with Amazon Q Developer or Bedrock teams on integration work, presenting roadmap updates to VP-level stakeholders, or engaging directly with customers adopting Strands for production workloads. You operate as the single-threaded owner for Strands across open source, product, and engineering.

About the team
The Strands team builds the open source toolkit for production AI agents at AWS. We believe that as LLMs become increasingly capable at reasoning and tool use, agent development should become simpler — not more complex. Our model-driven approach lets the model do the planning while we provide the infrastructure to make it reliable, observable, and scalable. We work in the open, ship fast, and measure success by the community of developers building real-world agents with Strands. We are part of AWS Velocity Labs.

Basic Qualifications

- 10+ years of engineering experience
- 5+ years of engineering team management experience
- 10+ years of planning, designing, developing and delivering consumer software experience
- Experience partnering with product or program management teams
- Experience managing multiple concurrent programs, projects and development teams in an Agile environment

Preferred Qualifications

- Experience partnering with product and program management teams
- Experience designing and developing large scale, high-traffic applications

Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status, disability, or other legally protected status.

Our inclusive culture empowers Amazonians to deliver the best results for our customers. If you have a disability and need a workplace accommodation or adjustment during the application and hiring process, including support for the interview or onboarding process, please visit https://amazon.jobs/content/en/how-we-hire/accommodations for more information. If the country/region you’re applying in isn’t listed, please contact your Recruiting Partner.

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, NY, New York - 242,100.00 - 327,500.00 USD annually