Amazon cut thousands of engineers in its record layoffs, filings show
Amazon Puget Sound Headquarters seen in Seattle, Washington on October 28, 2025.
Stephen Brashear | Getty Images
AmazonThe more than 14,000 layoffs announced last month affected nearly every part of the company’s growing business, from cloud computing and devices to advertising, retail and grocery. But one job category has suffered more disruption than any other: engineers.
Documents filed in New York, California, New Jersey and Amazon’s home state of Washington showed that nearly 40% of the more than 4,700 layoffs in those states were engineering positions. The data was reported by Amazon in Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) filings with government agencies.
The figures represent a fraction of the total layoffs announced in October. Due to differences in state WARN reporting requirements, not all data was immediately available.
Amazon has announced the harshest round of cuts in its 31-year history, joining a growing list of tech companies that are cutting jobs this year even as cash piles of profits soar. In total, there were approximately 113,000 layoffs across 231 technology companies. layoffs.fyiIt continues a trend that began in 2022 as businesses readjusted to life after the Covid pandemic.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has been on a multi-year mission to transform the company’s corporate culture into what he calls “the world’s largest enterprise.” He sought to make Amazon leaner and less bureaucratic by encouraging staff to do more with less and reducing organizational bloat.
Amazon is expected to make more layoffs in January, CNBC previously reported.
Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon.com Inc., speaks at the launch event in New York, USA, on Wednesday, February 26, 2025.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The company also said it is shifting resources to invest more in artificial intelligence. Technology is already poised to reshape Amazon’s white-collar workforce; Jassy predicted in June that the number of corporate employees will decline in the coming years, alongside productivity gains from artificial intelligence.
Beth Galetti, chief human resources officer, memory In announcing the layoffs, the focus was on the importance of innovation, which the company will now have to do with fewer people, especially engineers.
“This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we have seen since the internet, enabling companies to innovate faster than ever before,” Galetti wrote. “We believe we need to organize in a leaner way, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and our business.”
Amazon said in a statement that AI was not the driving force behind the vast majority of layoffs and that the larger goal was to reduce bureaucracy and emphasize speed.
Jassy said in Amazon’s earnings call last month that the cuts were made in response to a “culture” issue within the company, spurred in part by a prolonged hiring spree that resulted in “many more layers” and slower decision-making.
WARN filings show that layoffs affected various levels of software engineers, but SDE II roles, or mid-level employees, were disproportionately affected.
The AI boom is making software development jobs harder to get done, as companies adopt coding assistants or so-called interlaced coding platforms from vendors like Cursor, OpenAI, and Cognition. Launched its own rival called Amazon Kiro.
‘Significant role reductions’
More than 500 product managers and program managers, representing more than 10% of the total, were eliminated as part of the layoffs, according to records from states with WARN notices. According to the applications, senior executive and manager-level roles were also eliminated in the cuts.
As part of broader belt-tightening, Amazon in recent years has sought to reduce investments in some of the company’s more experimental or unprofitable ventures. Sunset a telehealth service, a video calling device for children, a wearable fitness device, and several brick-and-mortar retail chains.
Amazon’s video game division has been targeted in the company’s latest wave of layoffs, according to California WARN filings. Steve Boom, vice president of Audio, Twitch and Games, told employees in a memo viewed by CNBC that “significant role reductions” would occur at the game studios and central publishing team in San Diego and Irvine, California.
Game designers, artists and producers accounted for more than a quarter of the total layoffs in Irvine, according to filings, and they accounted for about 11% of laid-off employees at Amazon’s San Diego offices.
Boom wrote that the company also told employees it was halting most of its work on big-budget or triple-A game development, particularly massively multiplayer online (MMO) games. Amazon has released MMOs like Crucible and New World. It was also developing an MMO based on “The Lord of the Rings.”
Beyond its gaming division, Amazon has also significantly reduced its gaming sales. visual search and shopping teamsaccordingly multiple employee posts on LinkedIn. The unit is responsible for products such as: Amazon Lens and Lens Live, AI shopping tools that allow users to find products in real time through their cameras or images saved on their devices. company rolled Lens Goes Live in September.
The team was headquartered in Palo Alto, California, and Amazon’s WARN records show that software engineers, applied scientists and quality assurance engineers were hit hard in offices there.
Its online advertising business, one of Amazon’s biggest profit centers, has also been scaled back. More than 140 advertising sales and marketing roles have been eliminated at Amazon’s New York offices, according to state documents viewed by CNBC; This represents approximately 20% of approximately 760 positions.
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