About this role
Amazon Leo is Amazon's low Earth orbit satellite network. Our mission is to deliver fast, reliable broadband connectivity to customers beyond the reach of existing networks. From households to small businesses, schools, hospitals, and government agencies, Amazon Leo will serve communities and organizations operating in places without dependable internet access.
As a Principal Technical Program Manager, you will manage the complete lifecycle of complex hardware device portfolios and their integrated software systems, delivering products with significant cross-organizational business impact spanning multiple organizations and geographies. You own end-to-end hardware deliverables across product generations, managing costs within strategic guardrails while driving technical excellence and leading software architecture decisions affecting system integration, scalability, deployment strategies, and operational readiness.
You bring deep expertise in the software development lifecycle, requirements definition, generative AI fluency, and Airplane Cabin Systems integration to partner with customers and engineering teams on scalable processes that resolve endemic technical problems impacting product quality, software reliability, cost, or delivery speed. You deeply understand core system technologies and hardware/software component interactions across the device ecosystem, establishing mechanisms for concurrent software development and testing across team boundaries while optimizing quality through data-driven metrics and process improvements.
To ensure business and technical stakeholder needs are aligned, you drive focused discussions that lead to clear decisions while providing context for design direction and long-term perspective. You use your technical judgment to question proposals and test assumptions, making strategic trade-offs between competing priorities such as time, effort, feature scope, business opportunity, resources, and long-term sustainability. You create plans with clear, measurable success criteria and communicate progress and outcomes to Directors and VPs through effective written narratives.
You proactively identify risks in both hardware and software technical strategies before they become visible to others, bridge gaps between teams, processes, and system architectures, and help teams reduce exposure to classic failure modes such as insufficient requirements documentation or long-term impacts from third-party technology dependencies. You demonstrate sound judgment in how and when to escalate without damaging relationships, and you are data-driven, regularly reviewing metrics and proactively seeking improved mechanisms for visibility. 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
- Define program strategy and own cross-organizational goals in areas where business and architectural direction may not yet be established, providing inputs to annual planning and driving alignment across teams.
- Lead end-to-end requirements definition and software development lifecycle execution for hardware device portfolios and Airplane Cabin Systems integration, assessing development processes, test plans, and operational readiness.
- Drive architecture simplification and organizational changes that enable teams to work independently, decouple from dependencies, and reduce repeated engineering effort across hardware and software domains.
- Apply generative AI fluency to evaluate where AI-driven tools and methods can augment productivity, quality, and decision-making across program workstreams.
- Mentor and develop the technical program management community, build consensus among stakeholders with differing perspectives, and communicate complex trade-offs and recommendations clearly to senior leadership.
A day in the life
Your primary focus is guiding cross-functional teams through the full lifecycle of complex device programs. You might start your morning refining requirements for an upcoming milestone, then shift to reviewing software test results with engineering leads and identifying risks before they surface in program reviews. Afternoons could involve preparing a written narrative for senior leadership on a critical trade-off decision or coaching a newer technical program manager through a challenging stakeholder alignment. You operate with significant independence, applying your judgment to determine what matters most on any given day.
About the team
Amazon Leo is focused on providing broadband access to underserved customers across the world. We are passionate about accomplishing this mission as quickly as possible without sacrificing quality or performance. We embrace people who thrive in a startup-like environment and bring an entrepreneurial mindset to solving new problems at scale. The ability to set priorities using sound judgment is essential in this role, as you will have the independence to focus on what you determine is most critical to the organization.