LEAH MELVOIN
I am a 23 year Amazon veteran, most known for my management of the company's Voice of the Developer initiative. As the program owner I was an advocate for the Amazon global STEM population. I researched their concerns, articulated the issues impacting them, and either personally resolved or influenced the resolution of hundreds of problems impacting engineers and their management. I drove company investments in better computer equipment, developer tools, engineer training, operational excellence, and tech role-specific career development mechanisms.
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One of my most notable accomplishments was the creation and impact of the Amazon Tech Survey. I used the "working backward" approach to design the survey, asking engineers what they wanted senior leadership to know (vs. a top-down survey which asks engineers what leadership wants to know). I also made sure results were transparent to all employees to encourage them to take ownership and drive resolution to local problems. The result of my approach yielded a 95+% participant response to a voluntary survey for over a decade, setting the gold standard for employee engagement within the company.
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In my last few years at Amazon, I joined the Global Talent Management organization. Working with HR, Legal, and Compensation, I created the company-wide Amazon Job Level Guideline (applies to all employees, individual contributor and management tech and non-tech), simplified the Amazon Tech Promotions process, and wrote most of the company's Tech role guidelines. I also developed several trainings to help calibrate levels and support all types of engineers working to achieve Principal.
I was also a founding member of Amazon Women in Engineering and part of the global senior leadership team that influenced company changes to their parental leave policy and other benefits.
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In 2020, I decided to go out on my own and offer my expertise as a consultant. Since then I've worked with the following excellent companies: Airbnb, Amazon, CommerceIQ, Convoy, Datadog, Discovery, Elemy, Fabric, Flexe, Flexport, KKR, Meituan, Peloton, Pepsi, Remitly, Roku, Snapchat, Uplevel, and Varsity Tutors.
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For more detail on my Amazon work experience, see my LinkedIn profile.
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