AWS Layoffs Hit US And Canada Employees As Amazon Sheds 16,000 Jobs

‘These decisions are part of our ongoing effort to position the organization for the future while staying nimble and focused on delivering for our customers,’ said AWS top executives Prasad Kalyanaraman and Colleen Aubrey in a memo to AWS employees.

Amazon Web Services has confirmed that nearly all AWS employees who were impacted by Amazon’s massive 16,000 layoff round have already been notified.

In a memo to employees, AWS executives said the decision to lay off AWS employees is part of an organization-wide restructuring effort.

“These decisions are part of our ongoing effort to position the organization for the future while staying nimble and focused on delivering for our customers,” said Prasad Kalyanaraman, vice president of AWS Infrastructure, and Colleen Aubrey, senior vice president of Applied AI Solutions, in the memo this week to AWS employees.

“Our ambition is to be the world’s largest startup. That means doubling down on a culture of ownership, speed, and experimentation—which requires us to continue evolving our structure,” the AWS executives said.

The memo was first reported by Business Insider last week. Amazon confirmed its authenticity to CRN.

AWS Declines To Provide Layoff Details

As part of Amazon’s 16,000 layoffs of corporate employees last week, some AWS employees were laid off.

However, AWS declined to provide to CRN how many total AWS employees were involved, what roles were impacted, or what business segments inside AWS were affected.

AWS is Amazon’s cloud and AI business unit that is the $720 billion tech giant’s most profitable asset. Seattle-based AWS currently has an annual run rate of $132 billion.

AWS Layoff Notifications Sent To American And Canadian Employees

AWS said the vast majority of AWS employees who were being let go were notified on Jan. 28.

“The notifications to impacted colleagues in our organization who are based in the U.S. and Canada, have now been completed,” said AWS’ Kalyanaraman and Aubrey.

“In other regions, we are following local processes, which may include time for consultation with employee representatives and possibly result in longer timelines to communicate with impacted employees,” they said.

Amazon Layoffs Hit Technical Jobs Like Software Developers And Engineers

If AWS layoffs are anything like the layoffs Amazon conducted in its home state of Washington, many of the employees being let go are in technical roles.

Amazon laid off approximately 2,200 employees across Washington this month, which included mostly technical roles such as software developers, engineers and various product managers.

CRN obtained this information via an Amazon Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filing with the state Employment Security Department, which lists all the job titles of the 2,200 employees who were laid off throughout Washington this week.

Some of the most significant employee reductions were software dev engineer I, software dev engineer II and software dev engineer III roles. Hundreds of these roles were eliminated in Washington.

After software developers, some of the most significant layoffs came via product and project managers, as well as engineers.

Hundreds of Amazon roles that were cut included business intelligence engineers, data engineers, quality assurance engineers, ADC engineers, security engineers, front-end engineers and technical business developers.

Amazon Layoffs Reach Managers, Architects And Scientists

Hundreds of managers were terminated including: customer success managers, risk managers, technical program managers, project and product managers, software development managers and partner sales managers.

Other areas in which Amazon laid off employees included applied scientists, UX designers, sales operations, solutions architects and research scientists.

“These decisions are difficult and are made thoughtfully as we position our organization for future success,” said AWS’ Kalyanaraman and Aubrey.

“Changes like these are difficult, especially when they affect colleagues we value,” they said. “These decisions don't diminish what we've built together; rather, they're about positioning us to sustain and extend that impact as we continue to build the foundation for the future.”

Amazon will report financial results from its fourth quarter 2025 on Thursday.