Principal Technical Program Leader - PLM, One Material Handling System

Amazon Fulfillment Technologies & Robotics; Springdale (OH); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Amazon Fulfillment Technologies & Robotics is seeking a Principal for PLM to own the PLM system and engineering change processes across all hardware. You will set the strategy for product data and workflows, stand up the team, and drive enterprise-wide PLM decisions with leadership involvement.

The role sits at the center of our mission to scale engineering for a multi-product family, partnering with ERP, design tooling, and supplier systems to ensure end-to-end PLM integration and data

Qualifications

• Background in robotics, automation, or advanced hardware-based technological systems.
• Understanding of supply chain and manufacturing optimization strategies.

Responsibilities

• Define and lead PLM strategy and architecture across hardware products.
• Own PLM backbone, product-data and engineering-change processes for all hardware.
• Coordinate CAD-to-PLM integration and vendor relationships; govern data integrity.

Job description

Own and lead the engineering design and product systems backbone that makes Amazon's in-house material handling business possible. One MHS is building the design, integration, and manufacturing of material handling equipment for Amazon's fulfillment network in-house, and none of it scales without a world-class Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) foundation. As the Principal for PLM, you will own the PLM system and the engineering change process for the organization, and you will be the business process owner for product data and engineering change across all of our hardware: the PLM platform, engineering change management, the connection between computer-aided design (CAD) and PLM, and the way PLM connects to the systems around it. Where our product teams each own a product line, you own the PLM backbone they all depend on to design, release, configure, and manufacture. You will set the strategy for how the organization manages product data and engineering workflows at scale, stand up the team and mechanisms to deliver it, drive the highest-stakes PLM platform decisions in front of us, and bring clear, data-backed recommendations to leadership for approval. You are also a direct contributor to the organization's enterprise technology stack and strategy, partnering with the owners of the surrounding systems to ensure the whole ecosystem works together.

We are a passionate group of innovators, engineers, and business leaders dedicated to reducing variability and complacency in Amazon's logistics systems. This role sits at the center of that mission; the team you stand up and the decisions you drive on PLM architecture, variant management, and engineering change will determine whether our engineering organization can scale from a handful of engineers today to the large, multi-product-family team of the future.

Key job responsibilities

• Stand Up and Grow the Team: Define the team this function needs, and attract, hire, and develop its members (PLM configuration and application engineers, and business or change analysts) as the work scales. Set the mission, mechanisms, and standards, and grow the people and structure needed to run PLM over the long term.
• Own the PLM Backbone: Act as the business process owner for PLM across all of our hardware; own the PLM environment and the product-data and engineering-change processes that every product team relies on, and set the strategic direction for their evolution.
• Contribute to Enterprise Technology Strategy: Serve as a direct contributor and participant in the organization's enterprise technology stack and strategy, ensuring PLM is designed to work end to end with the surrounding systems (ERP, procurement, design tooling, and future manufacturing and supplier systems) in partnership with the teams that own them.
• Drive the Strategic PLM Path: Lead the analysis and recommendation on the defining question in front of us: whether to adopt the shared enterprise PLM platform and its product configurator capability, or stand up our own PLM to remove the external dependency. You will drive this to a decision; final approval rests with leadership up through the senior executive sponsor.
• Drive and Deliver the PLM Build-Out: Act as the technical program owner for creating our PLM system end to end, whether that is continuing within the shared enterprise instance or standing up our own. Define the implementation roadmap, scope, milestones, and resourcing; manage the systems integrators, cross-team dependencies, and engineering workstreams; mitigate risk and clear blockers; and deliver the platform to production on schedule.
• Lead Variant Management and the Product Configurator: Own the requirements, business case, and rollout strategy for the product configurator, the capability that lets the organization deliver equipment variants against firm engineering specifications at scale.
• Own the CAD-to-PLM Architecture: Drive the evaluation and recommendation on the primary CAD platform, balancing integration depth, scalability, migration effort, and team readiness; own the ongoing CAD and PLM vendor relationships, roadmap commitments, and support agreements.
• Engineering Change Management and Business Process Ownership: Define, release, and continuously improve the product-data management, change control, release, and requirements-management processes in PLM across the organization, and drive adoption to sustained usage.
• Compliance and Data Integrity: Own compliance and data governance for the PLM system; ensure product data, bills of materials, and engineering records meet quality, auditability, and security standards.
• Own PLM Integrations and Dependencies: Own the data contracts and integration pathways that connect PLM to the systems around it (enterprise resource planning, procurement, and downstream engineering and manufacturing tools), partnering with the owners of those systems to manage cross-team dependencies.
• Strategic Communication: Build consensus across engineering, manufacturing, finance, and partner teams; communicate complex technical trade-offs clearly and develop the narratives that inform leadership decisions.

About the team

Administration or related field, or adequate experience in business management

• Background in robotics, automation, or advanced hardware-based technological systems
• Understanding of supply chain and manufacturing optimization strategies

About the Team

Amazon installs a significant quantity of new buildings every year. The historical model has been to allow each integrator to use their own equipment, controls, subsystems, and methodologies. While that has allowed Amazon to be successful to this point, the variability between buildings has proven difficult to support and scale. One MHS' charge is to build partnerships focused on consistency and scalability across our network of the future. The PLM backbone this team owns is a foundation that makes that scalability possible; it is how we turn one engineer's design into a manufacturable, configurable, compliant product that any of our partners can build.