Came to the US in 2012 to start my career in computer vision and ML in a nonprofit organization mostly doing translational research. Changed jobs twice and joined AWS 3yrs ago as an ML specialist solutions architect. I didn’t know much about cloud technology at the time of joining. Never worked in a large enterprise prior to know how to navigate in such a complex environment. But I really ground it out hard to learn the technology, learn to work with stakeholders and customers, and learn to influence and make impact. Looking back the past 3yrs, I’ve done and achieved so much more than the first 7 years combined. I delivered mission critical workloads for high profile customers. Customers and workloads that I oversee bring in millions of dollars annually for AWS. I helped define and launch new ML service and features. I wrote blogs that are read and used by more than 60k customers. I delivered several breakout sessions at reInvent that consistently received the highest satisfaction score among all talks. Ask Me Anything. And I hope to give back to the community with some ideas, insights, and experiences. Edit 2: before you read on, just want to make clear that I did not mention a word about being an SDE/SWE/MLE. I clearly mentioned my role in the post. Edit 3: Solutions Architect (SA) vs SDE/MLE. SA is a customer facing technical advisory role where we work with customer to build solutions in the cloud. A ML SA not only build cloud ML solutions but also help customer conduct ML modeling at scale. I not only work with technical folks such as SDE/MLE/DevOps/DS/AS in an enterprise to ensure they are building it right but also work with their leaders, executives to influence their decisions as there is a fierce competition in ML space among vendors. SA also work with internal stakeholders. Most notably, I work with PM to get customers use case and request across to improve the services. PM rely on SA to hear what customers need. There are thousands of customers but only one PM and a limited engineering resource. They won’t be able to accommodate everyone’s request. Figuring out how to make them listen to me and have them work my way to solve my customers problem over others becomes one of the most critical aspect of this role. I also work with SDE/SDM, sometimes UX, to show them how exactly customers are using our services, where the problems are and whether implementation A is better than B. Blind tax 370k Edit: for those who think this TC is low. I can’t and won’t argue with you. And I didn’t intend to focus and brag about it. That’s what this promo at AWS brings me into. You may have a faster path to and go above this number, good for you. But for me coming from nonprofit research background in the first 6+yrs with a measly $50-70k salary, I’m grateful for what I have in the past 3yrs. #ama #machinelearning #AWS
Added lol
What's are you L7 of ? SDE or solutions architect?
What is your take on that lady who said she was the face of ML in AWS?
What level did you join Amazon? TC then and now?
Joined as L6 with 240k in the first year.
Great success story. Prioritizing impactful things for our customers and working hard to achieve them pays off.
Any advice for google L5 that’s coming into Amazon as L7? I have previously developed my own products from scratch and have been in product management for a while with technical background and MBA, but have not worked in the same technical area before. A little nervous that I am not a subject matter expert in the technical area.
Learn to write docs better. Google writes docs but it’s nowhere the level of scrutiny in them as Amazon. Look up doc ninjas at Amazon and they will review your drafts and give feedback. It’s a central group at Amazon. If you can write good docs, that will go a long way.
Wow this explains… a lot
Any recs on materials to get up to speed in the area
Is being specialized in CV ML as opposed to more general ML or other specialized areas good or bad for career and TC growth?
CV may not be the most trendy things in ML or where the most development is happening. NLP is. But if you come in with strong CV knowledge, it sets you up to learn other domains well. For career growth tho, depends on what you mean. Moving up the chain in an organization or move from IC to management doesn’t depend much on how much you know CV or NLP. TC growth wise, NLP jobs are much more demanding from industry trend.
Thanks. I already have 6 YOE in CV but recently switched to a role with no CV component. I really enjoyed working in CV, but not sure if I should leave that behind now.
370k TC is what 3 yoe folks are making these days. Nothing to brag about but guess if it make you feel better that’s good
If not Amazon then what?