Director, AWS Catalog

The AWS data catalog is how customers find, understand, and govern their data on AWS. The AWS Glue Data Catalog is the metadata layer beneath AWS analytics. It holds the schemas, table definitions, and partitions that Athena, EMR, Redshift, Glue, and SageMaker need to plan and execute a query, which puts it in the data path of nearly every analytical workload our customers run, and its crawlers are how a large share of that metadata gets discovered and kept current in the first place. Alongside it, AWS Lake Formation governs fine-grained access to that data, and Amazon DataZone provides the business context, discovery, and lineage (domains, projects, and data products) that make a data estate comprehensible to the people and applications using it. Together these three services serve customers of every size, from day-one startups to the largest enterprises in the world, and hold the definitive record of the data those customers store in Amazon S3 and query with our engines. We are investing heavily to make working with that data dramatically simpler for customers, and to ensure the catalog operates at the hyperscale we expect AI agents, rather than people, to drive as they become the primary consumers of enterprise data. Catalogs have become the control point for enterprise data and AI, and we are at the very beginning of building the one customers standardize on.

As a Director of Software Development for the AWS Catalog organization, you will lead a group of top talent building the metadata, governance, and discovery layer for all data on AWS. You will own the AWS Glue Data Catalog and its crawlers, AWS Lake Formation, and Amazon DataZone, and you will drive the roadmap and deliver on three fronts at once: building a foundation that operates at a scale and request rate well beyond what any catalog handles today, with the availability and latency that every analytics service above you depends on; making governance simpler and stronger for customers who have to know and prove who can see what across a large data estate; and making the catalog the layer that AI agents reason through, with the discovery, semantic search, and business metadata that let an agent find the right data without being told where it lives. You will do this while holding a deep commitment to open standards, building on Apache Iceberg and the Iceberg REST Catalog and interoperating with third-party catalogs rather than locking customers in. You'll lead multiple engineering teams through managers across geographic locations, and you'll spearhead new technologies that change what a catalog is capable of. You'll be a leader in the business as well, owning the financial health and growth of your services. You'll personally engage with C-suite customers to represent AWS's data catalog strategy.

Success in this role requires a leader experienced in establishing and building relationships with a wide range of peers, including senior AWS executives, customers at all levels of experience and responsibility, deeply technical software and systems engineers within the team, and internal organizations. Because the catalog sits between storage and every analytics and AI service, this role rewards a leader who builds strong partnerships across engineering teams and brings them along behind a shared technical direction. This leader must have the proven skills to easily switch between weighing in on complex engineering details, taking a long-term view of the business, growing and developing the next generation of AWS leadership, and overall operating as a large-scale organization leader. It requires the judgment to balance urgent, high-value customer features against multi-year foundational investment, and the discipline to evolve a large and sophisticated installed base without disruption, for customers whose compliance posture depends on us. It requires an ability to prioritize work for the direct team and partner teams, establish goals, and focus attention on the most important inputs to drive the desired business outcomes. This leader must be capable of scaling themselves and their team to meet the ever-increasing demands of a fast-growing business, and will excel at hiring and developing technical talent. The catalog is in the path of every query our customers run, so a passion and discipline around operational excellence is essential. Come build the catalog that every engine and every agent on AWS reasons through.

Basic Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience)
15+ years of software development experience
10+ years in senior engineering leadership roles

Preferred Qualifications

Background in data analytics, engines and catalogs.
Proven experience scaling large engineering organizations across multiple geographies.
Track record of delivering customer-facing products with high velocity in a fast-moving, competitive landscape.
Experience leading product engineering, from ideation through design, build, deploy, and support.
Strong written and verbal communication skills; demonstrated thought leadership.
Demonstrated ability to operate as a customer-facing technical executive.

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

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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 - 264,100.00 - 350,000.00 USD annually