Steve Kitchens Email and Phone Number

I lead a multidisciplinary engineering organization made up of electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, sensors, firmware, controls, verification, and technical program managers. My team’s charter is to design, develop, manufacture, test, and ship consumer electronics for our customers. This team is responsible for multiple products in the Alexa roadmap and new advanced products running in stealth. In my 10+ years at Amazon, I have built high performing teams from the ground-up on multiple occasions. I built the hardware development teams for both the Fire Phone and Astro. These new and incremental teams were built to start V0 product lines with long term visions of high growth. At a tactical level, my team leads cross-functional engineering teams as the single threaded engineering project owner. In developing products we are responsible for system architecture, EE and ME deliverables, verification and validation, controls and controls FW, sensor selection/characterization/algorithms, and developing manufacturing tests. I dive deep as necessary to give guidance and direction when the team hits roadblocks.As a leader, I am focused on hiring and developing a world class engineering organization and team. I am passionate about developing future leaders and structure so that we are ready to scale overnight if the business requires growth. I believe in taking extreme ownership throughout the entire product development lifecycle from concept to sustaining.At a strategic level, I promote innovation through mechanisms and new technology initiatives to enable future product features and customer experiences. I use high level judgement to invest and prioritize the most promising technology initiatives. I have written product requirement documents for future product proposals and I engage with our leadership team to discuss future products and strategic direction for the business. I am an advisor to the Latinos affinity group and a council member for LAB126’s student program’s intern diversity initiative.