Software Development Manager, Returns & ReCommerce

Welcome to the Worldwide Returns & ReCommerce team (WWR&R) at  WWR&R is an agile, innovative organization dedicated to ‘making zero happen’ to benefit customers, the company, and the environment. Our goal is to achieve the three zeroes: zero cost of returns, zero waste, and zero defects. We develop novel products and drive operational excellence to help customers keep what they buy, recover returned and damaged product value, keep thousands of tons of waste from landfills, and create the best customer returns experience in the world.

By focusing on the bottom line and the planet, we build the most sustainable re‑use channel by advancing the Circular Economy for Amazon – Returns & ReCommerce.

Amazon WWR&R is comprised of business, product, operational, program, software engineering and data teams that manage the life of a returned or damaged product from a customer to the warehouse and onward to its next best use. The work is broad and deep: we train machine learning models to automate routing, find signals to optimize re‑use; invent new channels to give products a second life;

develop product support to help customers love what they buy; pilot smarter product evaluations; and work from the customer backward to make the return experience delightful and easy.

You will help create customer‑facing and vendor‑facing websites, internal software and tools behind the reverse‑logistics process, and develop scalable, high‑availability solutions to solve complex business problems.

We are a team that enjoys fun at work while driving customer, business and environmental impact. We are backed by strong leadership focused on operational excellence and a reasonable work‑life balance, offering substantial career growth.

Amazon is earth’s most customer‑centric company, and through WWR&R it treats the earth as a customer too. Join us and innovate with the Amazon Worldwide Returns & ReCommerce team.

• 3+ years managing software development or machine learning engineering teams, including hiring, mentoring, and developing technical talent
• 4+ years architecting large-scale model hosting infrastructure, low-latency inference runtimes, and end-to-end model management workflows
• 2+ years of hands‑on programming experience in Java, C++, Python, or related languages, with a focus on writing highly optimized, production‑ready code
• Proficiency in Natural Language Processing (NLP), Computer Vision (CV), and core machine learning (ML) engineering design patterns
• Proven experience in Operational Excellence (Dev Ops/MLOps), Data Engineering/Pipelines, and Cross‑Functional Leadership (collaboration with Applied Science and Product teams)
• Excellent oral and written communication skills, with the ability to communicate complex system architectures, MLOps strategies, and AI solutions to all levels of the organization

The Worldwide Returns & Recommerce (WWRR) Science & Tech team owns a complex multi‑disciplinary scope: building the AI and machine learning infrastructure that powers Amazon’s global reverse logistics. Operating across the Online Return Center (ORC), Item Grading, and Transportation verticals, we deploy NLP, Computer Vision (CV), and Classical ML to solve high‑stakes engineering and asset‑optimization challenges at scale.

Returns are growing in volume and complexity. We meet this challenge by engineering production AI/ML platforms that automate decision‑making, maximize financial recovery, and optimize processing efficiency from the moment a customer initiates a return through every physical touchpoint.

By joining this team, you will design the high‑throughput model hosting infrastructure, intelligent grading pipelines, and low‑latency inference runtimes that accelerate the R&R flywheel—transforming global recommerce into a world‑class operation.

• 3+ years of engineering team management experience
• 3+ years of designing or architecting (design patterns, reliability, and scaling) of new and existing systems experience
• 5+ years of leading the definition and development of multi‑tier web services experience
• Knowledge of engineering practices and patterns for the full…