Books was Amazon's first product, and today, Books Ads is where that legacy meets the frontier of advertising technology. We're building the ad products that help every book advertiser in the world reach their ideal reader, and we're doing it across some of Amazon's most beloved surfaces: Amazon Book Store, Kindle App, Kindle eInk devices, and Audible.
We're looking for a Software Development Manager to own the technology that powers advertising across these reader surfaces, spanning both supply (ad placements, inventory, creative rendering) and demand (Sponsored Products, ADSP display and video, deals, and auction systems). You'll lead a team building systems that serve billions of impressions to hundreds of millions of readers monthly, while solving problems unique to books: authors are brands, readership is the conversion metric, and discovery happens across formats, devices, and surfaces that no other advertising vertical touches.
Key job responsibilities
- Lead a strong team of engineers to innovate and deliver software and infrastructure that powers Books Ads monetization.
- Work backwards from the customer to invent new solutions and to improve existing software.
- Work with the product and technical leaders to define the product direction and roadmap.
- Create vision and execution documents. Insist on the high bar for technical documentation and the quality of the developed software.
- Perform hands-on code reviews and other technical deep dives to ensure the right thing is being built and delivered to customers.
- Hire, coach, and mentor software engineers.
A day in the life
- You'll own the full ads stack across four surfaces from auction participation and ad serving on Kindle eInk to ADSP demand integration on Audible.
- You'll build at the intersection of AI and advertising leveraging LLM-based sourcing, conversion-optimized personalization embeddings, and autonomous campaign systems purpose-built for book advertisers.
- You'll work on greenfield problems: How do you measure the lifetime value of a reader across print, eBook, and audiobook? How do you serve ads in a distraction-free reading environment without degrading CX?
- How do you make advertising effortless for an independent author who has never run a campaign?
- You'll operate with startup speed inside Amazon's scale. Books Ads is a vertical team with end-to-end ownership, backed by Amazon's infrastructure and data.
About the team
Books Ads is the first vertical ads team within Amazon Ads, purpose-built because book advertisers and readers are fundamentally different from typical retail. Our advertisers range from Penguin Random House (managing thousands of titles across imprints) to independent KDP authors (managing a single debut novel on a constrained budget). Our readers dwell longer, scroll deeper, and compound engagement over time, Kindle readers consume 12+ books per month; Goodreads users shelf 538MM books annually.
We're growing at +19% YoY, have delivered +$41MM in annualized revenue from LLM-based sourcing alone, and are actively scaling ADSP across Kindle, Goodreads, and Audible. Our 2027 plan spans autonomous campaigns, books-native measurement (Author Halo, Publisher Halo, Comprehensive Ad Performance), premium creative (AI-generated book trailers), and international expansion into 5 new marketplaces. We ship fast, measure rigorously, and build for a future where every surface where readers discover books becomes a premium advertising destination.
This is a role where you'll build things that have never existed, for an audience that reads more, engages deeper, and converts differently than any other on Amazon.
