Demystifying the Amazon Cloud Technology Software Development Engineer Team

At Amazon Cloud Technology, there is such a group of people that they are often considered to only write code and not good at words. But that's just a misunderstanding of them. Their work not only needs to understand development and good communication, but also need to be able to dive deep into the needs of users. They are the Software Dev Engineers of Amazon Cloud Technology!

Five different SDEs from Amazon Cloud Technology were invited today, and they will share their work content, various activities in the company, their flashy work projects and various experiences in Amazon Cloud Technology.

First of all, let's get to know these five colleagues!

Next, ask them to introduce to us their different work and life in the form of question and answer!

Q: Can you briefly introduce yourself and your work?

Denghui: I am a software development engineer SDE in the Payments department of Amazon Cloud Technology, which belongs to the Commercial Platform department of Amazon Cloud Technology. The daily work is to cooperate with different business teams of Commercial Platform in Seattle and Vancouver to provide a better cloud computing platform experience for Chinese enterprises and individual developers.

Huiqi: I am a software development engineer. Like Denghui, I am responsible for the development of the payment system of Amazon Cloud Technology. Our Amazon cloud technology payment team is a global team, located in Canada, the United States and China. The main work of our Chinese team is more focused on providing Chinese users with more convenient and Chinese-style payment methods, helping users simplify the exchange of currency. Procedures and processes to collect payments more efficiently for the company.

Sutong: Our team is building a data platform, and I am currently responsible for the preliminary research and design of this project. The users of this project are the Marketers and Sales teams of Amazon Cloud Technology. By providing reliable and high real-time data, we can reduce their manual repetitive work and improve work efficiency.

Wen Tao: In the process of promoting the localization of Amazon Cloud Technology's business platform in China, I will be responsible for developing any functions that Chinese users need during the billing cycle; by writing and publishing software or services, I will support users in using Amazon Cloud The functions and localization requirements required for the services of the technology, and the universally applicable functions are extended to other regions of the world.

Q: What was the reason for joining Amazon Cloud Technology in the first place? Can you share what motivates you to work every day?

Chaoqun: What attracts me most about Amazon Cloud Technology is that it is always user-centric, and through reverse thinking, it rapidly iterates products to meet user needs. At the same time, here, no work is repetitive and boring . I need to constantly learn, accumulate and innovate to deal with changing user needs and ambiguous problems. It is always Day One.

Denghui: In terms of technology, Amazon Cloud Technology is a benchmark in the industry , and many of the technologies and solutions used in the work are already the de facto standards in the industry. At the same time, I have always been a proponent of long-term thinking, so I also wanted to learn the details of Amazon's corporate culture in depth; this is what attracted me to Amazon Cloud Technology.

Sutong: I believe that cloud services are undoubtedly one of the most promising technology directions in the future. In Amazon Cloud Technology, you can learn more advanced technologies and enhance your own strength. In the work of Amazon cloud technology, the exploration of the unknown field and the desire for the smooth delivery of the project inspire my daily work.

Wen Tao: It is very attractive to understand and learn how to build powerful services that support world-class traffic in Amazon Cloud Technology, and the software developed can be part of these services. At the same time, Amazon's simple, transparent and user-friendly corporate atmosphere is also very suitable for engineers. Here, it is a very valuable thing to use cloud services to help users solve problems by analyzing user needs more accurately. At the same time, learning, practicing and promoting better technology and more efficient engineering practice within the company, collaborating with colleagues who have the same technical pursuit, and constantly improving their skills are also very motivating.

Q: What are your most dazzling achievements and biggest challenges in Amazon Cloud Technology? At the same time, what is the most misunderstanding of your current responsibilities?

Chaoqun: At Amazon Cloud Technology, we quickly launch minimal products, listen to users' first-hand opinions, and then continue to iterate and optimize our products. For example, we found that it is simple for users to manually fill in the system configuration information, but it makes our onboarding experience discontinuous. After getting feedback from users, we designed and implemented a fully automated onboarding experience, which greatly improved the user experience and won unanimous praise from users. Of course, there are often challenges in development. I think the biggest challenge is that users often know what they don't want, but it is difficult to clearly say what they want. We need to constantly clarify the vague needs of users by minimizing functions. For the position of SDE, people tend to think that it is more inclined to realize the demand. But at Amazon Cloud Technologies, we encourage every SDE to discover and create new requirements. Through continuous innovation and continuous attempts to bring better products to our users.

Denghui: I feel that the biggest challenge is the balance between the localization of Chinese business and the consistency of global business, which determines the scalability of our business. The design of a system that can rapidly expand globally is itself a big challenge.

Huiqi: Since joining the team last year, I have participated in the design and development of new projects, mainly to solve how to add Chinese-style payment methods to the existing global payment system. This involves the cooperation and coordination of many groups, and it also needs to be very comprehensive. careful consideration. As for misunderstandings, I found that the misunderstanding of programmers in China is quite deep, especially for female programmers; haha. It seems that in everyone's eyes, programmers just don't know how to communicate and are not good at dealing with people. But actually writing code is only a small part of our job . Before writing code, we need to communicate with the product manager to clarify the requirements, determine the launch date of the new function, and then divide the large requirements into small requirements, and calculate the required manpower according to the schedule, and then start Technical arrangements - design solutions and technology selection, and then discuss these designs with more senior engineers, give an analysis of the advantages and disadvantages, and finally enter the development (generation) development (code) after reaching an agreement work.

Wen Tao: My most dazzling work achievement is to build a public infrastructure for dozens of services and hundreds of interfaces in Ningxia, and to support the operation of these services efficiently and stably. The most exciting projects are involved in building a data governance platform for the entire Amazon cloud service, through which a variety of data usage and management functions can be implemented and corresponding application scenarios can be supported. In a company of the size of Amazon Cloud Technology, there are a huge number of services and infrastructure inside, and many problems or use cases will become more complex as the scale expands. Designing solutions for large-scale systems at a higher level is a challenging and interesting problem to work on. Several previous colleagues have mentioned the misunderstandings we face, and I would like to share them again. Most people think that the responsibility of engineers is only to write software, but in fact, engineers need to have as much and deep understanding of the relevant business as possible. This enables a better system design. At the same time, engineers must have a long-term vision for the business and the system, and always reflect and test to motivate themselves to build more innovative and valuable systems.

Q: In your career, what are the deepest memories you have with the team?

Superb: At the 2021 Hackathon, our team took three days to implement an intelligent voice assistant that helps teams solve repetitive tasks and answer common questions.
Denghui: Hackathon together, discuss new ideas together, and build a new business from scratch together. This process is challenging and rewarding.

Huiqi: What impressed me is that when I first joined the team, I caught up with the team building. Everyone went to Yesanpo to play rafting. In the process, I could integrate into the team faster. In our daily work, we will often have happy hour, board games and milk tea parties and parties, we have everything you want. At the same time, in order to quickly familiarize us with the payment business, our team has also set up our own small library.

Sutong: Our team used to drift together, brainstorm together, hackathon together, and oncall together in the middle of the night, all of which are very precious memories.

Q: What does inclusivity and diversity mean to you at Amazon Cloud Technology? How would you describe your experience working at Amazon Cloud Technologies?

Chaoqun: The most intuitive feeling for me is that Amazon Cloud Technology respects everyone's background and experience. Friends from different industries and majors can give full play to their advantages here and learn different views and perspectives at the same time. This work experience allowed me to learn the industry's most advanced technologies and methodologies to solve different problems. It keeps me curious at all times, facing new challenges and opportunities every day. At the same time, Amazon Cloud Technology has a very good internal job transfer mechanism. I used to be responsible for the VAT calculation of Amazon Cloud Technology's global users as SDE's Tax group in Seattle. As a middle-office business group, we are far away from end users, so I chose to transfer to the localization team in China internally. Here, I can get first-hand user feedback, and at the same time, I can quickly meet the needs of Chinese users.

Huiqi: Amazon Cloud Technology was my first SDE job. Before that, I was in the financial industry. The inclusive and diverse cultural atmosphere of Amazon cloud technology is very attractive to me. The relaxed and pleasant working environment can stimulate the creativity of engineers, and the flexible and efficient home office system allows me to balance work and life well. In addition, Amazon Cloud Technology can also try many different fields, because the internal transfer is very convenient. I was in New York before, and I returned to China through the internal transfer last year. There will be a special team responsible for the internal transfer, so whether it is work or life All aspects will be well taken care of.

Sutong: Various activities organized by the Amazon Cloud Technology Association, such as walking, mindfulness training, etc.; I have also participated in the activities organized by connections, which means that I can express my views freely without worrying about the relationship between superiors and subordinates or whether I am The qualifications are still shallow . At the same time, I can implement Work-Life-Balance very well, and I can take care of the family well at the same time.

Wentao: Before the epidemic, the team I worked would often organize large-scale team building activities, such as mountain climbing, rafting, etc. Everyone returned happily every time. Amazon Cloud Technologies is a very inclusive and diverse business. Even if I work in China, before the epidemic, I often have the opportunity to travel to offices in other countries and discuss various topics of work and life with colleagues from different countries. Within the company, there will be special training and discussions on communication and creating a more benign working atmosphere. These activities will introduce more practical methods, which are very helpful for people-to-people communication both inside and outside the workplace. Working in Amazon Cloud Technology is very down-to-earth, whether it is the value provided to users, self-growth, or the mentors and friends I meet within the company, all make the work meaningful and valuable.

After reading the introduction of these five builders, you must have a different understanding of the SDE family of Amazon Cloud Technology? If you are also a software development engineer, want to join us? Submit your resume now!

Please send your resume to [e-mail] ; and indicate "SDE application" in the subject; our recruitment team will communicate with you about the corresponding job opportunities as soon as possible~~!