When I started at Amazon, the promo process felt like a mystery. How does Amazon choose who to promote, and what criteria do they use? Would they ever even want to promote me? I grappled with impostor syndrome.
Why Amazon Waits
My promo journey took about 2 years from when I first felt ready. While I often felt frustrated with how long it took, I came to understand why Amazon takes a cautious approach:
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Amazon promotes engineers who consistently demonstrate they’re operating at the next level. Premature promos are risky. If you’re not ready, the gap between where you are and where you’re suddenly expected to be becomes visible very quickly.
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Amazon’s job levels are public internally. The moment your level changes, anyone who hasn’t worked with you assumes you’ve been a senior engineer for years. That’s a lot to land on someone who earned the title last week.
A Year of Prep
I spent about a year preparing. I created work summaries that detailed my contributions and how I operated at the next level. When I reviewed these with a principal engineer, they pointed out areas where I could expand my impact.
One question stuck with me.
I described a complex project I felt proud of, and they agreed it showed strong technical skill. What would make it next-level, they said, was turning what I’d learned into something other teams could use, like a shared library, a mechanism, something that meant other teams wouldn’t have to solve the same problem from scratch.
How had I left things better than I found them? I didn’t have a good answer, which meant I still had room to grow.
Unfamiliar Territory
I took that feedback to heart on a larger project: a full rewrite of the Prime Video offers service, which shows you what you’ll pay to rent or buy a movie or TV show. A senior engineer and their team from the same org supported the effort. I had to learn a new domain fast, build the right system, figure out how to lead and collaborate with an unfamiliar team, all while meeting strict latency SLAs. We load tested it extensively and did dry runs with partner teams before going live.
Two Attempts
Right after we shipped, I prepared my promo doc and submitted. It got denied. The project had shipped too recently for anyone to assess its impact, and I wasn’t yet thinking at the right scope. Reviewers saw flashes of next-level thinking but needed to see it consistently over time.
I took that in, started thinking longer term, putting together vision docs, mapping where the system should go over the next few years rather than just what we needed to ship next.
For months, I’d be in the middle of something like coordinating with partner teams, providing directional feedback in a design review, or unblocking a teammate and teaching them how to unblock themselves, and I’d catch myself thinking: “oh! this is what it is to be a senior engineer.” It felt like a realization more than something I’d planned. Then those moments stopped. I was just working.
I resubmitted and the promo went through.
My former manager had a way of explaining when a promo was ready: the organization’s leaders look at you and your title and think “that person isn’t a Senior Engineer? Must be a clerical error, easy enough to fix.” When my approval arrived, that’s exactly what it felt like.