DESCRIPTION
Job summary
Do you want to change the world? Alexa and Echo are literally shaping the future of voice recognition and cloud-based content/services. Alexa is the name of the Amazon cloud service and the brain that powers Echo, the award-winning and groundbreaking new Amazon device designed around your voice. Echo connects to Alexa, to provide information, answer questions, play music, read the news, check sports scores or the weather, and more—instantly. It's hands-free, and always on. All you have to do is ask.
Key job responsibilities
Do you want to change the world? Alexa and Echo are literally shaping the future of voice recognition and cloud-based content/services. Alexa is the name of the Amazon cloud service and the brain that powers Echo, the award-winning and groundbreaking new Amazon device designed around your voice. Echo connects to Alexa, to provide information, answer questions, play music, read the news, check sports scores or the weather, and more—instantly. It's hands-free, and always on. All you have to do is ask.
To achieve this, we blend of a variety of disciplines (such as NLP, data mining, machine learning, big data, semantic web, graph stores, cloud computing) in an effort to understand our customers and the things they're excited about. To complement our complex algorithms and extensive data analyses, we create elevated and inspirational mobile and web features across the entire Echo system. We use artificial intelligence, data mining and usability studies to develop new features, and we test them through hundreds of R & D experiments a year. We want to make it easy for you to search for your favorite products, discover new brands you’d like, play your favorite songs or even replenish your fridge - and much, much more!! We are also incredibly intent on solving some of the most complex computing problems to be found in industry and academia, and we get to test our solutions in the real world every day. And most importantly, we relentlessly ask: "What haven't we thought of yet?"
As a member of the Alexa Identity team, you will enable Alexa to treat people as individuals and manage the preferences and resources they have shared with Alexa. You will build the technologies that allow Alexa to deliver personalized experiences wherever they are in their day. You will have significant influence on our overall strategy by helping define these features, drive the system architecture, and spearhead the best practices that enable a quality product.
The ideal candidate has a demonstrable track record of technical leadership and success in delivering new features and products. A commitment to teamwork, hustle, and strong communication skills (to both business and technical partners) are absolute requirements. Creating reliable, scalable, and high performance products requires exceptional technical expertise, a sound understanding of the fundamentals of Computer Science, and practical experience building large-scale distributed systems. This person has thrived and succeeded in delivering high quality technology products/services in a hyper-growth environment where priorities shift quickly.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
· 4+ years of professional software development experience
· 3+ years of programming experience with at least one modern language such as Java, C++, or C# including object-oriented design
· 2+ years of experience contributing to the architecture and design (architecture, design patterns, reliability and scaling) of new and current systems
· Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
• Experience in building complex software systems that have been successfully delivered to customers
• Knowledge of professional software engineering practices & best practices for the full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, and operations
• Experience with distributed computing and enterprise-wide systems
• Experience in communicating with users, other technical teams, and senior management to collect requirements, describe software product features, technical designs, and product strategy
• Experience influencing software engineers best practices within your team
• Hands-on expertise in many disparate technologies, typically ranging from front-end user interfaces through to back-end systems and all points in between