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.
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.
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.
In 2020, I decided to go out on my own and offer my expertise as a consultant. Since that time I've worked with the following excellent companies and more (some are confidential): Airbnb, Amazon, CommerceIQ, Convoy, Datadog, Discovery, Elemy, Fabric, Flexe, Flexport, KKR, Meituan, Peloton, Pepsi, Razorpay, Remitly, Roku, Snapchat, SoFi, Uplevel, and Varsity Tutors.
I've also privately coached software engineers, product managers, technical program managers, quality engineers, engineering managers, UXDs, and more!
For more detail on my Amazon work experience, see my LinkedIn profile.