Dave Brown, who joined Amazon Internet Providers as one among its earliest EC2 engineers and rose to steer its compute, AI and machine studying companies, is leaving after practically 19 years.
AWS CEO Matt Garman advised workers in a memo posted publicly Wednesday that Brown will depart on the finish of July for an unspecified “new position outdoors of the corporate.” Amazon exec Dave Treadwell, who joined the corporate in 2016 after 27 years at Microsoft, will take over the group Aug. 1.
Brown’s exit comes about three months after Amazon promoted him to senior vp. Brown had been on the corporate’s senior management workforce since 2023.
His tenure stretched again to the early days of the cloud. He joined AWS in 2007 in Cape City, South Africa, the place Amazon primarily based a part of its early EC2 engineering, earlier than relocating to the Seattle space.
In an interview with GeekWire earlier this 12 months, as the corporate marked the AWS twentieth anniversary, Brown recalled Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, then the corporate’s prime cloud government, gathering the small Cape City workforce in these days and telling them the enterprise may someday be price a billion {dollars}.
Brown mentioned he may barely grasp the determine at a time when the service was bringing in tens of {dollars} a day: “I couldn’t even think about how a lot a billion {dollars} was. It appeared like some huge cash.”
AWS as we speak runs at roughly $150 billion in annualized income, and grew 28% in its most up-to-date quarter — its quickest tempo in practically 4 years.
Brown’s position grew with the enterprise. After beginning as an engineer on EC2, or Elastic Compute Cloud, he went on to steer its broader compute group, together with shut collaborations with the executives working Amazon’s customized silicon enterprise. His purview additionally expanded to incorporate the machine studying and AI companies now central to AWS, such because the Bedrock and SageMaker platforms.
Treadwell has run Amazon’s eCommerce Basis, the technical spine of the corporate’s on-line retail operations, since becoming a member of in 2016. Earlier than that he spent 27 years at Microsoft, the place as a company vp he labored on Home windows, Xbox, and the .NET software program framework.
In his memo, Garman described Treadwell — identified internally as “Tread” — as one among AWS’s largest and most vocal inside prospects, somebody who pushed the cloud group to innovate and can now lead it.
Brown will stay via the top of July to assist with the transition. In his personal farewell observe, he mentioned it felt like the precise time to start a brand new chapter. “I’ll be cheering you all on from the sidelines,” he wrote.
