careerladder.fyi › Career paths › Amazon
How people got jobs at Amazon
What 104 people did before they joined Amazon: where they worked, what they studied, which role they came in through, and how long it took.
104
people in our data got there
63%
had a graduate degree first (of those listing one)
6
typical years since first job
- The most common step right before: from other companies (57%).
- The most common way in was Software engineering (39% joined in that kind of role).
- Of those who list their education, 63% had a graduate degree before arriving and 15% a PhD.
- The typical person arrived about 6 years after their first job.
- The most common earlier employer: Apple (6% had worked there).
How Amazon compares
- People arrived about 2 years earlier in their careers than at the typical one of the other Big Tech companies (6 vs 8 years since their first job).
Among people who list their education; places with at least 10 such people.
Show as a table
| People listing education | Share | |
|---|---|---|
| Apple | 50 | 78% |
| 16 | 75% | |
| Meta | 103 | 71% |
| 105 | 69% | |
| NVIDIA | 36 | 67% |
| Amazon (this page) | 54 | 63% |
| Adobe | 43 | 58% |
| Microsoft | 97 | 58% |
| Amazon Web Services (AWS) | 44 | 50% |
| Palantir Technologies | 36 | 50% |
| Salesforce | 28 | 43% |
| Oracle | 30 | 37% |
Show as a table
| Median years | ||
|---|---|---|
| Adobe | 12 yrs | |
| Amazon Web Services (AWS) | 11 yrs | |
| Salesforce | 11 yrs | |
| NVIDIA | 10 yrs | |
| Apple | 10 yrs | |
| Meta | 8 yrs | |
| Palantir Technologies | 8 yrs | |
| 7 yrs | ||
| Microsoft | 7 yrs | |
| Oracle | 7 yrs | |
| Amazon (this page) | 6 yrs | |
| 6 yrs |
Which role they joined in
Kinds of role with fewer than 5 people are combined into "All other roles".
Show as a table
| People | Share | |
|---|---|---|
| Software engineering | 41 | 39% |
| Research | 19 | 18% |
| All other roles | 32 | 31% |
| Data science & ML | 7 | 7% |
| Product management | 5 | 5% |
Show as a table
| People | Share | |
|---|---|---|
| Software Engineer | 16 | 15% |
| Software Development Engineer | 11 | 11% |
| Applied Scientist | 8 | 8% |
What they did right before
Show as a table
| People | Share | |
|---|---|---|
| From other companies | 59 | 57% |
| From banks & Fortune 500 | 12 | 12% |
| From Big Tech | 11 | 11% |
| Publishing research | 8 | 8% |
| This was their first listed step | 6 | 6% |
| Straight from a degree | 6 | 6% |
| Other | 2 | 2% |
Where they worked before
A person can count under more than one employer.
Show as a table
| People | Share | |
|---|---|---|
| Apple | 6 | 6% |
| 5 | 5% |
Education
Among the 54 of 104 people who list their education.
Show as a table
| People | Share | |
|---|---|---|
| Bachelor's | 20 | 37% |
| Master's | 22 | 41% |
| MBA | 4 | 7% |
| PhD | 8 | 15% |
How much experience they had
Among the 93 of 104 people with an earlier job listed.
Show as a table
| People | Share | |
|---|---|---|
| Under 1 year | 3 | 3% |
| 1-3 years | 21 | 23% |
| 3-5 years | 12 | 13% |
| 5-8 years | 22 | 24% |
| 8-12 years | 17 | 18% |
| 12+ years | 18 | 19% |
Where would your path lead?
Paste your LinkedIn or resume and see the ladders people like you climbed to Amazon, and how each step changes your chances.
Plan my path to Amazon →
Paste your LinkedIn or resume and see the ladders people like you climbed to Amazon, and how each step changes your chances.
Plan my path to Amazon →
Related
How these numbers are made. From 3k+ public career histories collected for careerladder.fyi (dated jobs, degrees and publications). The collection was built around particular employers, so people who reached well-known tech, AI and finance employers are over-represented: read shares as "among people in this dataset", not as hiring odds. Names are shown only when at least 5 people are behind them; smaller groups are combined into "Other". No individual profile is shown. Updated November 2026.