Amazon Biz Dev
Hey everyone reposting due to no responses,
Looking for some insight here. I'm currently interning in private credit at a large asset manager with $1T+ AUM, primarily working on funding LBOs and M&A. The internship is a full year, so l'll have a solid amount of deal experience built up by the end, albeit on the credit side.
Recently, I received an offer for a Business Development role at Amazon, focused on launching a new service, likely within Amazon Shipping (so amazon ops not AWS). The role involves building a pipeline, working on market segmentation, gathering customer insights, and contributing to the development of a new product. It's heavily client-facing, with a lot of direct engagement to understand customer needs. There are also opportunities to pivot into other business areas/roles (I imagine account management, product management too potentially) within Amazon if I decide to broaden my focus. I'm trying to weigh my options.
For someone interested in consulting or a strategy role, how would this Amazon Biz Dev experience stack up compared to staying in private credit?
How is Business Development generally viewed as a career path at FAANG, especially in terms of progression, comp & long-term career growth?
What kind of exit opportunities could I realistically look at if I stayed on this Amazon path?
Would love to hear thoughts from anyone with experience in either area. Thanks!
I am not sure if you are aware that biz dev at corporate and private credit are like day and night so totally different career paths. For staregy, biz dev is much better, the same for consulting (though here I'm hesitant because people usually don't lateral biz dev -> consulting, it's the other way around). Biz dev is a mix of strategy and account management, sometimes also sales, but really depends on a specific team. I closely worked with amazon folks, both amazon and aws and can assure you that each team understand something different through biz dev. It's just vague and so will be your job tasks.
Thank you for your reply! Yes I’m aware they’re different career paths, honestly I was looking for strategy/consulting roles from the beginning but ended up securing a private credit internship with no other offers so I decided some experience was better than none. Tbh I’m not super interested in Finance more so in strategy over the longer term. As you said a lot of it depends on the team and I don’t where I’ll be assigned yet all I know is I’ll be in Amazon Ops not AWS. Would you say this is a solid career path itself and how easy/difficult would it be to transfer to the strategy side of the business?.
I'm slightly confused now because to me biz dev and bix ops are two separate divisions... biz ops is more like admin stuff and ad-hoc support while doing excels. Biz dev is more like what I said earlier, a mix of strategy/account management/sales/even product management, very vague and hard to explain. The money is relatively good in the US but obviously not at the high finance or even consulting level. Are you gonna be working in the US?
Nope I’m UK based and I don’t have salary figures yet (I’m expecting 40,000 maybe?). It’s not a Biz Ops role though but sits in Amazon Ops. May as well add the job description below:
Role Summary: The Business Developer role at Amazon Operations is geared toward ambitious, analytical, and customer-obsessed individuals who are driven to contribute to launching and scaling new business services. The position requires working cross-functionally to gather market insights, develop customer pipelines, and improve products based on customer feedback. It is focused on ensuring that new service offerings align with market needs and enhance customer experience.
Key Responsibilities:
• Market Opportunity Identification: Analyze and identify market segments for new services, helping guide strategic growth and product focus.
• Customer Relationship Management: Build and maintain strong, trust-based relationships with potential and current customers, ensuring high levels of satisfaction.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with internal teams, including Product Management and Technical teams, to ensure customer requirements are understood and integrated into product development.
• Performance Analysis: Dive deep into metrics, conduct root-cause analysis, and connect findings to strategic areas for improvement.
• Process Innovation: Evaluate existing purchasing and operational processes, propose improvements, and execute solutions that enhance user experience, lower costs, and increase operational efficiency.
Required Skills and Attributes:
• Strong problem-solving and analytical capabilities to identify and drive process improvements.
• Excellent communication and teamwork skills to collaborate effectively across diverse teams.
• A proactive, self-starter attitude with a proven ability to navigate ambiguity and manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment.
• Experience or understanding of B2C logistics is advantageous.
• Proficiency in MS Office, CRM tools, and relevant automation software.
okay, I still don't understand why it sits with biz ops but anyway ... so if you wanna start biz dev in general, amazon is the best place as it pays lots of attention to proper client due diligence, relationship building etc. however, I'm pretty sure you won't be doing like half of those things in the real life. the companies put these fancy job descriptions yet the reality is being a glamoured admin at the junior level. this said, I don't know what you expect financially and personally. do you wanna have a good wlb and fine with a starting salary of around 40k in London? then yes, go for it. be aware the pay bumps are gradual and after several years you will get maybe 70k, then around 130-150k with around 10 years of work experience, plus some small bonus. To me it's not sufficient for London, but everyone has different priorities. Just to add one thing, if you are looking for something mentally stimulating, the biz dev is not the right thing
Thank you so much for your response! I don’t necessarily mind working hard but tbh finance just doesn’t interest me as much, so I decided that I’d try pursue something else. I suppose I need to do some thinking on what matters more to me money or interest. I guess maybe after a few hears in PC i could get an MBA and hop over to a strategy role from there but my concern is A: the cost and B: the fact that MBA recruiting isn’t standardised here like it is in the US.
It all comes down to personal preferences and priorities, but be aware that living in London is expensive and 40k is literally nothing for a decent quality of living unless you wanna live far away and share your flat. High finance pays better, not sure about PC, but overall the money is better. If you start in biz dev, you'll most likely need to lateral internally (might be an uphill battle) to the strategy seat, and then lateral to a different company for the strategy role. This might take several years and the positive outcome is not guaranteed. Usually biz dev at Amazon, then strategy at company X doesn't happen, unless the company is really small and buys your Amazon name on CV. Why not to explore other roles, even off-cycles?
I’m actually living with my parents at the moment so money isn’t an issue in that sense. I have been exploring other roles but there are barely any strategy/consulting jobs here at the junior level and I go to a semi/non target so recruiting has been somewhat difficult. I have a few more interviews now but both are buyside credit investing seats (Liquid Credit & PC). My thing is I’m not super motivated at work because I know in the back of my mind it’s not really what I want to do long term. I do value WLB to an extent but since I’m early in my career I don’t mind working hard (in finance I know that’ll never change and I’ll always be working at least 50 hours a week).
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