Your Questions, Answered!

Who is Senior/Technical Account Manager at AWS?

Senior/Technical Account Managers (TAM) are the ones who execute the strategies to drive the
customer adoption using AWS services. They will have a balanced mix of tech and customer
facing skills as they will be working solely with the customer to drive discussion, work with
senior leaders and look at risk management. They will provide the support for strategic tech
direction and help to plan and build solutions around that direction.
The role is 50% technical and 50% senior stakeholder/customer management.

How can I apply for the TAM role?

Due to the private data processing policies, I will not ask to share your CV over LinkedIn.
We will follow those 2 easy steps instead:

(1) Apply to the role using the link from my first message;

(2) Drop me a message when done.

What is it like to work at Amazon Web Services?

Meet our Technical Account Manager Marcelo who speaks about the role of a TAM:
https://youtu.be/7AlXtC59oyM

Basic qualifications for the TAM/Senior TAM:

To be successful within the TAM role, we have a few minimum requirements, which include:
 Solid Network and connectivity skills: you will provide with examples of designs,
implementations, or problem incidents you've led or been involved with.
 Solid Compute skills (Linux, Windows, Serverless, etc.): you will provide with examples
of systems design, implementations, or complex troubleshooting/escalation/resolutions
you've led or been a part of. If your examples involved other domains such as Security,
Database, storage, etc. that is great.
 Customer facing / customer engagement experience. Dealing with external customers
 Areas you have been challenged technically, where you have learned new things and
applied them to your situation, or applied your experience in new or unfamiliar areas.

What is the job location?

The role is based in the location you have applied for and your customers will be based around
this location. There is also a possibility to work virtually depending on a location.

If you apply for the UK based role - you can work virtually from anywhere in the UK and travel to
the customer locations within the country 25-30% of the time.
What is the Salary range?
For now, I cannot give a definitive figure on salary, as that is determined by your experience and
strength of the interviews if all goes well. But I can tell you that the package includes a sign on
bonus, pension, health insurance and best of all (substantial) shares of Amazon. So you will be
well looked after if you decide to come on board.
What I am more than happy to do is confirm that we would be able to match your expectations,
if you are comfortable sharing this confidentially?

For your information, here is what the compensation package includes at AWS:
 Base salary
 Sign On payment in year 1 (paid in 1 lumps sum guaranteed)
 Sign On payment in year 2 (paid in 12 equal installments)
 Stock of Amazon

How much travelling is required?

The role has around 10-25% travel. This usually results in day visits/overnight stays depending
on the customer request. Please note that due to current health situation, customer visits
have been suspended under further notice and our clients have been supported virtually.

Does Amazon help with relocation?

To help with relocation Amazon will provide a relocation package, which includes a lump sum to
cover transport of you /your family/belongings, and rent deposit, as well as relocation assistance
to help you and any family who may come with you should you be successful.

What can you tell me about the current Coronavirus situation?

Please be insured that AWS are aware of the current global health crisis, and would like you to
know that this will not impact anyone’s hiring ability. Our teams are actively working with
candidates to provide you with flexibility and guidance throughout this process. For now, all our
interviews are done virtually to insure our employees and your health.

Is English required?
Yes. AWS operates globally through the English language, and a working proficiency is
required. Additional language might be required (ie. German) depending on the location.

I am not interested but might be in the future, can I reach out to you?
Yes! I would love you to get in touch when you are ready. Please save my email:
nkateryn@amazon.com, and let me know whenever you are ready to chat.
What is the interview process?
1. Online Assessment: you will receive a separate e-mail with the invitation, instructions
and tips
2. Phone Interview: this one will be highly technical as well as include questions related to
Amazon Leadership Principles
3. Onsite Interview day: you will have 5 virtual interviews on the same day to meet the
Hiring Manager and the team

How can I prepare for the recruitment process?

Please go through the tips on how to prepare and what to expect on the next page.
 Prepare to interview for the TAM role

The recruitment process for the TAM role is: Complete application - Resume Review –
Online Assessment - Phone Interview (Technical + Soft Skills/Leadership Principles) – Final
Remote Onsite Loop (5 interview round).

Where do I start my preparation?

As a general starting point in your preparation for the TAM interviews, I would suggest
spending decent time answering those questions to yourself:
 What is the value proposition of moving workloads from on-premises (Private Cloud) to
AWS? How do you manage customer expectations at different levels on cloud
transformation? Do they understand the concepts of “technical debt” or “shadow IT”?
 Describe a system or solution that you have designed in the past? Did it stand-up? How
did you improve on it?
 Would you describe yourself as a specialist or generalist (T-shaped)?
 Rate yourself 1-10 (Unix / Networking / Virtualization / Middleware / Infrastructure)
 Take me through a customer escalation you resolved? What was the outcome? Why did
you chose proposed solution? Would you have done anything different on reflection?
 Tell me about something you learned recently and why?

Online Assessment

You’ll begin by responding to general scenarios representative of various situations across

Amazon. As you progress through the assessment you’ll be presented with more role-specific
questions.
Completing the assessment all at once is encouraged but not required. If you exit the
assessment and return later, you'll resume where you left off.

You will receive a separate e-mail with the invitation and further information and advice on the
assessment.
Phone Interview Preparation – Technical + Soft Skills/Leadership
Principles

The interview will include both – highly technical areas as well as soft skills.

Our technical interview questions may cover the below topics:

 Network and connectivity: examples of designs, implementations, or problem incidents
you've led or been involved with (i.e Network Essentials - understanding of the
various layers, TCP/IP, DNS, etc, Exposure to security concepts / best practices
etc)
 Compute (Linux, Windows, Serverless, etc.): examples of systems design,
implementations, or complex troubleshooting/escalation/resolutions you've led or been a
part of. If your examples involved other domains such as Security, Database, storage,
etc. that is great.
 Areas you have been challenged technically, where you have learned new things and
applied them to your situation, or applied your experience in new or unfamiliar areas. We
want you to be successful and so want you to be able to show your breath and depth of
your work. We're less concerned with size, and more concerned with the scope of your
role, how you deal with ambiguous and challenging situations, and how you apply your
knowledge to help solve customer problems.

You might be also asked additional questions around the following including one/two
LPs:
 Storage (ie, Knowledge of large-scale storage architectures and backup/DR strategies/
iSCSI, NFS, CIFS, SMB etc)
 Troubleshooting
 Database (ie. PostgreSQL/Redshift/SQL Server etc)
 Virtualization
 Architecture-AWS Architecture
 DevOps

The soft skills questions will be based on our Leadership Principles.

You can find examples of the questions attached to this e-mail “LP Example workbook”.
The full list of Amazon Leadership Principles can be viewed here.

Tips to get ready:

 You might have already read this article, but I strongly advise to revisit it again
 Amazon LOVES data - I would recommend having various data points and specific
metrics to demonstrate your success to back up each of your answers around leadership
principles
 STAR method is a valuable tool to use for structuring your answers. Attached is the
workbook to serve you as an example of how you may structure your answers
 The interviewer will try to see your scope of impact and influence within your team as well
as the rest of the organization. Have a look at the template attached that will help you to
structure some examples that you can use during your interview
 You may expect interviewers to dive deep into the examples you provide (asking for more
context, metrics, results, what could be done differently) to get your sense of reasoning
and the full picture of the given situation
Other General Tips

Top tips for a great Amazon interview:

 Get familiar with the job description and prepare your questions regarding the job
 Prepare a short introduction of yourself in the context of your profile, professional past,
qualifications and education
 Use specific examples. The strongest examples are work based examples, but you can
also use study or personal examples
 Since Amazon is a data-driven company, try to use as many numbers in your examples
as possible
 Familiarize yourself with the Amazon Leadership Principles before your interview and
think of times when you’ve demonstrated them, e.g. When did you have to “earn the
trust” of your colleagues or manager?
 If you haven’t understood the interviewer’s question, ask them to repeat it or explain it
further – this is totally fine
 Feel free to ask any questions you have about the role, AWS or Amazon in general –
that shows your interest in this opening
 Try to use “I” instead of “we”, since the team will be probing to see your contributions to
the projects in particular

Try to explain your examples in a clear manner. Using the STAR technique will help you:
 SITUATION/TASK - Describe the situation/task you faced and the context of the story
 ACTION - What actions did you take?
 RESULTS - How did you measure success for this project? What results did you
achieve?
Here is a short film to help you understand the STAR method.

Here is a success story of interviewing for the TAM role.

Meet our Technical Account Managers to see what it is like to work for AWS:
Meet Isabel, Technical Account Manager, UK - Watch Video
Meet Pawan, Technical Account Manager, UK - Watch Video
Meet Richard, Technical Account Manager, UK - Watch Video

Here are some other useful links to help you with your interview preparation:
AWS EMEA - How to Get Prepared for an Interview at AWS
AWS Interview Questions
10 Mistakes to avoid during the Amazon Interview