Q&A with Supriya Sharma Principal Engineer

I would like to share with you a truly remarkable women at Amazon and her long career journey. Supriya Sharma joined Amazon 14yrs ago as an entry level Software Dev Engineer (SDE1) in AWS S3. Supriya, has worked on many different teams and org’s across Amazon from AWS, to Fire phone and finally growing roots with Last Mile Delivery Tech (LMDT) where she has been for the past 9yrs and today a Principal Engineer. Join me in a Q&A session with Supriya as she shares her stories on her experiences?

Tell us about your journey at Amazon?

I joined Amazon in February 2009 as a software engineer (SDE) in the Amazon Web Services S3 team. I had just graduated from University of Florida in December 08, and this was my first full time position. I remember my first team and project I had had worked on with this team, was a new storage architecture within S3. I recall being nervous and excited at the same time as I had no experience working with distributed systems and or the scale at which S3 operates. So when my first project on the team was to build out a test platform to run end to end tests for the new storage architecture I was mazed. I remember feeling excited and challenged as every day came with a list of things I needed to understand and solve.

A few years into working with AWS, I heard about the Amazon devices organization and some of the exciting projects they were working on. Realizing that I did not know anything about device software development attracted me and so I decided to move to the devices organization. I worked on the platform team building the architecture for collecting metrics and logs from devices and over time our platform team supported all of Amazon devices including Alexa and Kindle as well as many Amazon apps. In an effort to continuously grow and learn, in 2014 while exploring new opportunities I learned about a team in Amazon Logistics called Last Mile. What I found exciting about this team was both learning about transportation logistics at Amazon scale but also how software systems work in unison with on-ground operations required for delivering packages. Looking back at my career trajectory here at Amazon, I feel grateful that I have had an opportunity to work on different parts of Amazon as well as learn from a lot of smart people.

What accomplishment at Amazon are you most proud of?

There have been many proud moments for me so far here at Amazon in my tenure. If I had to pick one I will go with one of the earliest moments in my career which was launching the metrics collection platform for Amazon devices. When I joined the team, the existing metrics platform could only scale to capturing metrics from a very small percentage of the devices and my manager at the time asked me to define what can be done differently for Fire phone. I remember feeling out of my depth in solving this problem, as I went thru my first design review. I was new to the team and new to designing software for devices. My understanding of metrics collection was based on how metrics were defined and collected for backend services I quickly learned to dive deep. I gathered information by asking questions seeking helped from collogues to guide me. A few key pieces of advise I received around this time was to always ask questions, get early design feedback and trust that my opinions and ideas add value even if I am new to the space. Over the next year, there were a lot of learnings as we launched this platform for Fire phone and after that we were able to scale for all of Amazon devices and apps. This was one of the first projects where I obtained a chance to define a technical vision, work on the launch and see the impact with effective performance and error monitoring.

What are you most excited about in your current role?

I have been part of the Last Mile Delivery Tech organization for almost 9 years and was one of the first engineers on the team in 2014. In my time on the team, I have had the opportunity to work on many different areas within Last Mile. Every year, our challenges evolve and continue to get more interesting. Solving hard technical problems as well as finding ways to innovate on behalf of drivers, operators and end customers is exciting and motivating to me. I am proud of how far Last Mile has come from a one page vision in 2014.

What is your favorite leadership principle and why?

I appreciate many Amazon’s leadership principles like Dealing with Ambiguity, Earn Trust and Invent and Simplify. My favorite leadership principle though and one that I have used frequently in my career is Ownership. I have always valued the ability to not feel boxed into one role as an engineer and have the ability to provide input and direction from the point of view of product, operations and customers. Many exciting innovations in Amazon started because someone saw an opportunity for solving a problem and took it upon themselves to advocate for it, drive it, and make it happen.

What is your favorite Amazon memory?

I have many favorite memories from my 14 years in Amazon. One that comes to mind is from 2015 when we were working on enabling food deliveries via Last Mile delivery network. I was part of the engineering team working on this interesting and challenging project. I had a chance to work with various engineering, science teams and food delivery services to launch the restaurants delivery program. On the day of the launch, we ordered lunch using the Prime now app and when food was delivered, the feeling of joy and accomplishment in the team is one of my favorite Amazon memories.

What do you do for fun/work-life balance?

I love the outdoors and fill my summer weekends with family backpacking and camping trips whenever possible. In the last few years I have picked up skiing which I now greatly enjoy with my daughter. The mountains are our favorite place to be and I feel lucky to live in a city where they are only a short drive away. At home I spend most evenings working in the yard and playing board games with my family.