Seth Hays
Studied at Idaho State University
Works at Amazon
Available Wednesday
Starting at 6:00 PM UTC
Questions? Start chatting with this coach before you get started.
About Seth
My journey into technology began with an Apple IIe and a collection of text-based video games—because nothing says “cutting-edge entertainment” quite like reading, “You are standing in a dark room,” and typing GO NORTH. One of my earliest professional adventures came when I was asked to fix the network connecting downtown Sacramento CA’s parking garages. There was just one small problem: I had no idea what a Cat 5 cable was. Nevertheless, after three hours of inspired guessing, strategic plugging and unplugging, and what may have been an accidental act of genius, the network worked. Twenty Six years later, I have absolutely no idea what I did. One wife, Eight kids, a dog, and three college degrees later, I now manage global development teams comprising more than 800 engineers at Amazon. I’ve also jumped with both feet into the deep end of artificial intelligence, creating my own product, AirPrompter. From text adventures on an Apple IIe to leading engineers around the world and building with AI, my career has been powered by curiosity, persistence, and the firm belief that if you keep experimenting long enough, something remarkable—or at least operational—will eventually happen.
Why do I coach?
Why do I coach? Apparently, I’m incapable of standing on the sidelines without trying to help. I’ve been a university professor, financial advisor, public speaker, and engineer coach at Amazon—all roles built around helping people learn, grow, and make better decisions. But my most demanding leadership experience has probably come from raising eight kids. That has required advanced skills in negotiation, conflict resolution, resource allocation, and explaining—repeatedly—why everyone cannot sit in the front seat. I’ve also coached soccer, football, wrestling, basketball, and swimming. At this point, if someone adds a ball, a whistle, or a body of water, I’ll probably try to coach it. But the real reason I coach is simple: I love being part of other people’s stories. Few things are more rewarding than helping someone recognize their potential, move past what is holding them back, and turn an aspiration into something real. I don’t need to be the hero of the story. I genuinely enjoy being the person in the corner offering encouragement, perspective, and the occasional well-timed push. Watching someone succeed—especially when they once doubted they could—is one of the greatest rewards in life. That’s why I coach: because helping people become the person they aspire to be never gets old. And after eight kids, hundreds of engineers, and nearly every youth sport invented, I’ve had plenty of practice.
Work Experience
Software Development Manager
Amazon
January 2022 - Present
Lead Kindle’s developer platforms, distributed build systems, and global infrastructure supporting 800+ developers and 24,000+ builds per day across North America, India, China, and Western Europe. Highlights: • Directed multi-million-dollar infrastructure portfolio spanning remote execution, build caching, artifact storage, dependency graph architecture, and physical build farms. • Delivered 70% faster builds through multi-platform build contract redesign. • Cut compute spend 80% by migrating macOS/iOS fleet to Apple Silicon. • Unified three fragmented release pipelines into a single global system. • Operated at 99.9999% availability, driving infra error rate down to 0.06%. • Led three global teams (Seattle, Chennai, Madrid) with 11 direct reports and influence across 800+ developers. • Hired and developed senior ICs (L6/L7), mentored principal engineers, and helped define multi-org technical strategy. • Influenced senior leadership across multiple verticals—supporting the creation of Amazon’s central C++ organization.
Senior Software Engineer
Amazon
January 2019 - January 2022
Assigned to work on engineering and architecture projects related to Alexa and Kindle devices.
Data Engineer Team Lead
Simplifile
October 2013 - January 2019
• Led cross-functional team building TRID compliance platform under strict regulatory timelines. • Designed OCR microservice processing 500+ concurrent documents with zero downtime. • Modernized Java document APIs to raise test coverage to ~80% and reduce defects by ~30%. • Established engineering cadence that improved predictability, delivery, and quality.
Software Development Engineer
Idaho National Laboratory
July 2009 - August 2013
• Led R&D initiatives across cybersecurity, energy, and national security. • Rebuilt tcpflow in modern C++ with real-time packet streaming and forensic toolchain. • Developed IoT-style telemetry system computing dynamic-line ampacity for utilities. • Built secure Solr/Lucene-backed national-security portal with LDAP authentication. • Developed x86/C firmware forensics tools and modernized ImageJ into cloud-based analysis system.
Financial Planner
Merrill Lynch
December 2002 - December 2005
Financial Planner
Education
Idaho State University
B.S., Computer Science
2009 - 2011
Minor in Mathematics
Golden Gate University
Masters, Financial planning
2003 - 2005
University of Nevada, Reno
B.S., Economics
2001 - 2003