Software Development Manager, Avionics Verification and Test

Amazon Leo is Amazon’s low Earth orbit satellite network. Our mission is to deliver fast, reliable internet connectivity to customers beyond the reach of existing networks. From individual households to schools, hospitals, businesses, and government agencies, Amazon Leo will serve people and organizations operating in locations without reliable connectivity.

As a leader of the Satellite Test Design team, you will lead and engage an experienced, cross-disciplinary team that builds and maintains manufacturing test software for satellite subsystem-level components (LRUs), driving quality and throughput on the production floor.

As a manager of the team you will play a crucial role in ensuring Leo’s readiness for manufacturing and launch through detailed and efficient test operations. You will work closely with internal engineering and manufacturing teams across ground and space systems to help architect and implement advanced test infrastructure and code.

Export Control Requirement: Due to applicable export control laws and regulations, candidates must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (i.e., current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum.

Key job responsibilities

• Build, lead, and manage a diverse team of engineers focused on development frameworks and production services to support satellite manufacturing environments while leveraging technologies such as leveraging technologies such as Python, Docker, Linux, and AWS services.

• Provide technical guidance for the team in addressing projects with broad scope and limited definition to ensure test and design objectives are met.

• Define team growth expectations and organization strategy.

• Coordinate internal and external resources to ensure team and project success.

• Develop software frameworks and processes to optimize testing capabilities and manufacturing throughput.

• Provide technical leadership for integration campaigns and collaborate with responsible engineers, manufacturing engineers, software developers, and tooling teams to deliver a thoroughly tested spacecraft ready for launch.

• Communicate fluidly across a variety of teams to identify product risks and how they will be addressed to ensure mission success.

• Juggle multiple priorities while optimizing the system and schedule.

• Apply critical thinking in complex situations and ambiguous environments.

• Conduct cause of error analysis and drive issue resolutions to improve team and process performance.

A day in the life

• You start your morning reviewing sprint progress across three LRU workstreams, unblocking engineers and adjusting priorities based on manufacturing floor needs. Your team of SDEs writes and maintains Python-based test procedures that validate satellite hardware at the subsystem level before integration.
• Mid-morning, you’re in a design review where one of your engineers is proposing a change to the common test framework that will apply across all LRU repositories – you help them think through the blast radius and coordinate the cross-repo rollout. After lunch, you sync with your manager on the platform team’s progress adopting the new cross platform test execution layer, and how your delivery team will migrate existing test suites to the new framework.
• In the afternoon, you’re working with a manufacturing operations lead who needs a new test added to cover a production escape. You scope the work, assign it to the right engineer based on skill and availability (assigned owners), and ensure it lands in the next sprint.
• Before end of day, you have a 1:1 with one of your senior SDEs where you discuss their technical growth path and how cross-LRU contributions are expanding their scope.
• Your customers are the manufacturing floor operators and production engineers who rely on your team’s software to validate every satellite component before it ships. Your internal stakeholders include hardware test engineers, integration teams, and the platform team that provides shared tooling and infrastructure. You report to the SDM who owns the full manufacturing test SW org and work alongside senior technical leaders driving cross-LRU architecture decisions.

3+ years of engineering team management experience

• 7+ years of working directly within engineering teams experience
• 3+ years of designing or architecting (design patterns, reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems 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

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

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, REDMOND - 184,900.00 - 250,200.00 USD annually