Design Tech Manager, POD

Amazon • Seattle, WA

33d

About The Position

Advertising is being remade. The brands that win the next decade will be
ones that figure out how to deliver creative that is personal, performant, and
produced at a scale no human team can match alone. Generative AI is the unlock.
But generation alone is not the advantage. The advantage belongs to the system
that connects creation to delivery to learning, and gets better with every
impression.
Amazon Ads is building that system. We are investing in the models, the
infrastructure, and the product intelligence to make personalized, brand-aligned
creative a default capability for every advertiser, not a luxury reserved for
the largest budgets. The work is early, the stakes are high, and the opportunity
to define how this category develops is real.
We are building that system. And we need a Design Tech Manager to build and lead
the team that makes it real.

As Design Tech Manager for POD's Design Technology team, you will build and lead
a frontline team of Design Technologists and AI prototypers — the block-shaped
generalists who span design, engineering, and data. Your team sits at the
intersection of design vision and production reality. You don't just prototype
concepts; you ship functional experiments with real model behavior, graduate
winners into engineering roadmaps, and set the technical bar for how design and
AI interact across the creative stack.
This is a player-coach role. You will manage, develop, and grow a team of 4–8
DTs while remaining a credible technical and design voice in cross-functional
conversations with engineering, science, and product leadership. You will own
the team's execution, define its standards, and drive the process improvements
that let POD ship at the velocity the best AI organizations demand.

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience as a Design Technologist, Creative Technologist, or equivalent role building production-quality prototypes at the intersection of design and engineering
• 3+ years of people management experience, including hiring, performance management, and team development
• Proficiency across web, mobile, and emerging AI/generative interfaces; ability to build functional prototypes using real model APIs and production data
• Strong understanding of software design patterns, component architecture, and the ability to extend and debug third-party libraries and frameworks
• Demonstrated ability to work on large, ambiguous problems with limited guidance and deliver results

Nice To Haves

• Experience designing and prototyping with tools such as Figma, Adobe Creative Cloud, or similar
• Familiarity with generative AI systems — image generation, video generation, LLM-powered interfaces, or agentic workflows
• Experience driving process improvements and building shared tooling that scales team output
• Track record of influencing technical and design decisions across multiple teams
• Familiarity with accessibility standards, design systems, and UX research integration

Responsibilities

• Hire, develop, and retain a high-performing team of Design Technologists and AI prototypers; own their growth, performance, and career trajectories
• Set clear expectations, provide direct and actionable feedback, and conduct rigorous performance assessments in partnership with other design technology leaders
• Build a team culture grounded in craft, speed, and learning, where shipping a working prototype beats presenting a polished deck
• Actively recruit and grow design technology talent across the organization; mentor individual contributors at multiple levels
• Lead the team in building large-scale, production-quality prototypes for POD's highest-priority AI and creative initiatives
• Establish and enforce technical standards across prototype and reference code, including security, maintainability, scalability, and extensibility
• Drive adoption of shared prototyping tools, frameworks, and platforms across the design org; create infrastructure that multiplies team output
• Serve as a trusted technical voice for engineering partners; earn credibility through demonstrated quality and architectural thinking
• Own the team's delivery against POD's roadmap; break complex, ambiguous problems into parallel workstreams and drive execution with limited guidance
• Operate at the intersection of design and engineering, embedding directly with product and science teams to pair on implementation and polish in production
• Compress the cycle from design concept to live production test; move fast on standardized formats and faster on novel ones
• Identify and resolve root causes of endemic workflow problems; build tools and services that increase team throughput
• Influence UX strategy and technical direction across POD and its partner organizations
• Build consensus across discordant views; represent the design technology perspective in planning, roadmap, and architecture conversations
• Partner with creative, product, and science leadership to ensure prototype work is grounded in real advertiser and shopper problems, and that winning experiments have a clear path to scale

Benefits

• health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans, EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line, Flexible Spending Accounts, Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage)
• 401(k) matching
• paid time off
• parental leave

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager
• Education Level: No Education Listed