Amazon Web Services announced hundreds of job cuts this week, in areas including training, sales, and physical stores technology, but noted that it’s still hiring in core areas of its business, with thousands of jobs currently posted.
A check of Amazon’s jobs site confirms this statement, showing about 3,770 job posts globally under the Amazon Web Services category as of Friday morning. But the site also provides a deeper sense for the geographic and functional areas where AWS is still hiring, and with that, a sense for what the company is prioritizing.
- The largest number of AWS job posts is in the category of operations, IT, and support engineering (about 1,100), followed by software development (950); solutions architect (325); sales, advertising and account management (285); and technical project/program/product management (166), among others.
- The majority of AWS job posts (about 2,130) are in the U.S., including about 980 in Washington state, 650 in Virginia, 405 in California, 296 in Texas, 220 in New York, 185 in Ohio, and 99 in Oregon, plus other states.
- Internationally, the site lists 179 job posts in Ireland, 140 in India, 135 in Germany, 130 in Japan, 129 in the UK, 118 in Australia, 103 in Canada, 68 in Israel, and 64 in China, among other countries.
- Based on the results of our keyword searches, hundreds of current AWS job posts make some reference to AI, in the job title, description, or qualifications.
This week’s AWS job cuts are the latest to ripple through the tech industry, dating back to widespread cuts starting in late 2022, but they took many AWS employees by surprise, judging from messages posted to LinkedIn this week.
Amazon has been working to find internal opportunities for employees impacted by the cuts, in addition to offering severance packages and other separation benefits, a spokesperson for AWS said earlier this week.
The company is “committed to supporting the employees throughout their transition to new roles in and outside of Amazon,” the spokesperson said at the time, adding that the decisions “are difficult but necessary as we continue to invest, hire, and optimize resources to deliver innovation for our customers.”
In the Sales, Marketing, and Global Services organization, most of the cuts are in training and certification, and sales operations. AWS said it’s shifting its focus to self-serve digital training and training programs run by external partners.
For the AWS team that develops technology for Amazon’s physical retail stores, the cuts followed reports Tuesday that Amazon is shifting away from its “Just Walk Out” technology in its larger Amazon Fresh grocery stores.
AWS, which leads rivals Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud in market share, reported profits of $7.2 billion on revenue of $24.2 billion in the fourth quarter, contributing significantly to Amazon’s overall business growth.
