George Holt

Engineering Leader with Product Ownership Experience in Developer Tools

I build high-trust engineering orgs that deliver experiences developers love and adopt.

Exploring senior leadership roles at the intersection of engineering and product in developer platforms and tools.

• Org scale: Managed managers (4 SDMs), 25+ engineers; multi-team planning and execution.
• Adoption & launches: ~17x growth to ~200k MAU; shipped CodeWhisperer / Amazon Q in IDEs.
• Cross-discipline experience: Manager of Managers - 3 years, Engineering Manager - 10 years, Product management - 7 years, Software Engineer - 3 years, SDET - 3 years.
• Cross-company model: Enabled multiple service teams to contribute reliably to shared toolkits.
• Engineering systems: delivered productivity gains and cost savings in multiple companies.
• Culture: High-trust, high-accountability teams; predictable delivery, sustainable pace - yet capable of delivering in high-pressure situations.
• Public speaking & thought leadership: A speaker at major industry events including 2019 AWS New York Summit (18,000+ attendees) and 2011 Microsoft Build, sharing best practices in developer tools and engineering systems.

About Me

I'm an engineering leader with more than 25 years of experience at companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Snowflake, where I've built and scaled high-performing teams and delivered developer platforms at scale. My work includes AWS's IDE extensions; launching CodeWhisperer and Amazon Q; driving 17x adoption growth for AWS IDE Toolkits; saving millions annually through build system strategy at Snowflake; and contributing to five major Windows releases (XP-10). Throughout my career, I've gravitated toward challenges that require fixing what's broken, scaling what works, and building healthy organizations around both. From being the second leadership hire on a new Microsoft team that grew to 60 people, to leading multi-team organizations at Amazon and Microsoft, I've gained a unique perspective on growing teams and products responsibly — with a focus not only on outcomes, but on how those outcomes are achieved.

I focus on:

• Building cultures of trust and accountability, where engineers feel safe to take risks and share ideas, but also know performance standards are clear and consistent.
• Coaching engineers and managers into leadership roles, developing a pipeline of future leaders who extend impact beyond my own span of control.
• Driving cultural transformations — shifting teams from reactive firefighting and burnout toward proactive, sustainable engineering practices.

What Colleagues Say About Me - Direct Quotes from Annual Reviews

• "George trusts team members to make decisions and provides inspiration and guidance when we need it. I especially appreciate when I can bring George into a tough conversation because I know he'll be on my side and help find a solution."

  — Direct Report, 2023

• "George has hired some very skilled managers"

  — Peer, 2023

• "Under George's leadership, the Toolkits team managed to deliver more results than anyone expected."

  — Manager, 2024

• "I was surprised to see myself venturing into new, challenging roles as a result of George's encouragement and guidance. George is unfailingly considerate and attentive to his team."

  — Direct Report, 2021

• "I really liked how under his leadership the IDE Toolkits was able to release smaller and bigger features on a consistent cadence"

  — Peer, 2021