Seattle, WA
Engineering & product leader
I turn complex platform problems into products that teams love to use — by bringing engineering, science, and product into one team.
I'm an engineering and product leader in Seattle. I run a 30+ person org at Amazon spanning engineering, applied science, and product — three platform charters that thousands of engineers build on daily. My teams own customer-facing performance (latency as a product), distributed tracing across a 90,000+ service graph, and AI-powered code migration that turns multi-year programs into automated workflows.
Before Amazon: a decade at Microsoft shipping Skype, HoloLens, Bing Mobile, and Office — including stints in London and Zürich.
What defines my leadership: I set a high bar while creating psychological safety for teams to experiment with ambitious ideas. I believe the best products come from empowered people who feel safe to take risks. I mentor across the org with a focus on underrepresented voices in engineering leadership. Outside work, I build and ship real apps with AI to stay close to the craft.
Amazon · Seattle & Vancouver, BC
My org sits at the center of the amazon.com storefront — three platform charters that thousands of Amazon engineers build on every day. I run it as one multi-discipline team: engineering managers and their teams, a product function, and an applied-science lead, spanning Seattle and Vancouver, BC.
On performance, we treated latency as a product: instrumenting the critical path, going after the slowest real customer experiences, and proving the revenue impact of every millisecond. That produced the fastest amazon.com shopping latency in years and a program estimated to drive $1.5B+ in annual revenue.
On observability, we built distributed tracing and analytics across a 90,000+ service graph so teams could see, in one place, how a customer request actually flows through the system. And I manage a team applying custom AI to turn slow, manual migration programs into automated, repeatable workflows.
I inherited this org with low morale and unclear direction: assessed the product portfolio, wrote a vision document that resonated with senior leadership, and rebuilt the culture from the ground up — zero attrition through the transition. Within six months, operational health scores went from 25% to 90% on one product line and 12% to 50% on another.
On the people side: three promotions in one year, exceeded hiring targets, and restructured when performance gaps emerged — always pairing high standards with individualized growth plans.
On strategy: when asked to evaluate a new business opportunity in package delivery latency, I delegated the analysis to my economist and TPM, collaborated with senior principal engineers across three orgs, and delivered a recommendation within one month — the most efficient senior-leadership document review in my nine years at the company. We recommended a strategic support role rather than full ownership, transitioned it cleanly, and kept the team focused on our core charter.
When a partner team wanted to rush new workflows straight to production, I pushed back and helped them navigate it more deliberately instead, then gave extensive feedback ahead of their executive demo. They succeeded — a reminder that backbone and generosity aren't mutually exclusive.
Amazon
Amazon — Alexa Communications
I was a PM working on bringing voice and video calling and messaging to Alexa — the first communications experience on the platform — and for the launch of the Echo Show, Alexa's first device with a screen.
Skype · Microsoft · London, UK
I led the PM team setting strategy and roadmap for the next generation of Skype messaging, used by hundreds of millions of people. We built a web-based messaging experience that ran inside the native iOS and Android apps — a write-once approach that let us ship faster across surfaces.
Designed and launched Skype on HoloLens tablet companion app - AR video calls where you would Skype call someone from a tablet to a remote person's space (wearing HoloLens) and point, draw, and drop in photos. HoloLens flew to the International Space Station and was used in orbit by astronaut Scott Kelly, with NASA Mission Control doing a Skype call and drawing so he could see inside the space station.
Bing Mobile · Microsoft
I doubled mobile monthly active users while migrating mobile onto a shared backend with Bing desktop and compressing release cadence from quarterly to daily — a full CI/CD modernization.
I was PM for the UI for a new Windows Phone app, bSeattle — a restaurant-discovery app with a hyperlocal focus: human-authored news feeds, ML-generated dish summaries, and panoramas of interiors. It held a 4.5-star lifetime rating.
Microsoft — Office, SharePoint & Communicator · Zürich & Redmond
I believe the best work happens when people feel safe to take risks and are held to a high standard. These aren't in tension — they reinforce each other.
Monthly demos, learning days, structured mentorship. I build systems that make good outcomes repeatable rather than depending on individual brilliance.
I look for what worked in one area and apply it to challenges in another. The best solutions are often already proven somewhere — they just need someone to see the connection.
The hardest leadership skill is declining opportunities that don't align with strategy. I'd rather a team do three things exceptionally than seven things adequately.
Things I build with AI outside the day job — a way to stay close to the craft while running an engineering org.
Real-time tracker for Washington State Ferries on iOS, Android, and web. Live vessel positions, upcoming departures, and drive-up space availability, plus personalized “leave by” times from a trimmed-mean model over your own recorded crossings. Serverless AWS CDK backend on the WSDOT ferry APIs.
Full-stack app where an extended family reserves days at a shared vacation home — with a booking-approval workflow, shared task tracking, local weather and tides, photo sharing, and an AI chat assistant. Built hands-on across the AWS stack (Cognito, Lambda, DynamoDB, API Gateway, SES, Bedrock, S3, CloudFront) behind a cross-platform React Native front end.
A custom cross-platform app built as a personal birthday gift — an animated card with ASCII art, confetti cannons, balloons, and interactive fireworks, bundled with a few homemade mini-games (basketball, Snake, and a Wordle clone).
Point a phone camera at a spinning record and it measures the turntable's true speed and wow-and-flutter in real time — tracking the label's rotation frame-by-frame through an FFT and phase-correlation pipeline, no test record or strobe disc required. The signal-processing core is dependency-free and unit-tested.
I highly endorse Brandon as a manager. He is extremely passionate about delivering high quality products and understanding user needs. He clearly articulates the product vision to rally the team and drive the product to success. Brandon is a thinker, and is always willing to listen and consider other opinions. As a manager, he takes extra time with his reports to listen and coach them and provide invaluable insight.
Brandon sets a high bar but creates a safe space for his teams to innovate and be creative in meeting that bar. He's successfully scaled his leadership across increased scope and additional teams by empowering his direct reports. Fun to be a member of his team and motivating to see the continued growth in his leadership.
Brandon creates a psychologically safe environment that encourages experimentation with ambitious ideas. He supported me in three experimental initiatives last year, fostering an atmosphere where I feel comfortable pursuing innovative approaches without fear of failure.
Brandon exemplifies thoughtful leadership by providing timely, specific feedback that enables growth. When my promotion case needed work, he clearly articulated the gaps and provided concrete ideas to bridge them. He never left me uncertain about next steps, which built my confidence and accelerated my development.
Brandon excels at handling tricky cross-team situations with clarity and fairness. He provides direct feedback on shortcomings while also giving clarity when misalignment exists with other teams. I can rely on him to help distinguish between gaps and strengths, especially when prioritization is unclear.
Brandon's ability to Think Big led to a major project I'm currently working on. What started as a simple question — 'Why not make use of our historical data?' — evolved into a significant initiative. His vision to look beyond the obvious and identify opportunities in existing assets demonstrates how thinking big can unlock meaningful innovation.
B.S. Computer Science — minors in Business Administration & Chemistry
Always happy to talk product, platform, and team building.
