# Chris Eckhout > Engineering leader in the Seattle area, Washington. Software development manager at Amazon, leading internal AI-powered tooling and a shared integration platform. Previously a software development manager at AWS (Amazon MSK and ECR control planes). Founder of FamJet (famjet.com), a family travel packing-list service. This file is a plain-text version of chriseckhout.com for AI agents and other tools. It matches the résumé at https://chriseckhout.com/resume. ## Contact - Email: ceckhout@gmail.com - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-eckhout/ - Location: Seattle area, Washington, USA - Website: https://chriseckhout.com/ ## Pages - [Home](https://chriseckhout.com/): overview, selected work, career summary - [Résumé](https://chriseckhout.com/resume): full résumé (prints to two pages) - [FamJet case study](https://chriseckhout.com/famjet): the problem, the product, and how he built it ## Summary Engineering leader with nearly 20 years of experience writing software and managing engineering teams. Built and ran cloud-native control planes at AWS, and now leads internal AI tooling for engineers at Amazon. Founded FamJet, a consumer product written with AI tools. Background in backend services, microservices, DevOps, and Agile delivery. ## Experience ### Software Development Manager, Amazon October 2025 – Present - Lead engineering for internal AI-powered tools and a shared integration platform used by other teams for AI-driven workflows. - Own the integration layer that multiple teams use to connect agents and tools to internal systems, and set the patterns those teams follow. - Look past reported pain points to the workflows behind them, and redesign those workflows using AI. - Test new workflows and interaction models with small prototypes, then scale the ones that work. - Lead early work on autonomous agents, working with security, platform, and governance teams to define how agents get identity and what they can execute. - Weigh new capabilities against reliability and security so that experiments can move to production. ### Software Development Manager, Amazon Web Services September 2022 – October 2025 - Led teams of up to 13 engineers owning control-plane components for Amazon MSK and ECR. - Owned the Amazon MSK control plane, first its APIs and then the workflows behind them, and drove MSK Express brokers to functional completion. - Cut operational load on the MSK control plane by ~75% by fixing recurring issues, designing out future failure modes, and paying down technical debt. - Led Amazon ECR archive storage tiers through functional completion and production readiness, up to final deployment. - Designed and delivered an automated region build process that cut the developer effort to launch a new region by ~70%. - Coached engineers toward promotion. Five were promoted at Amazon: three from mid-level to senior and two from junior to mid-level. ### Founder, FamJet (personal venture) November 2025 – Present - Founded FamJet, a family travel service that builds a packing list for each trip. (famjet.com) - Does most of the development, using AI-assisted tools, and deployed it on Vercel. AI also generates the packing lists. - Makes product decisions together with his wife, who owns the packing lists and marketing. ### Associate Director, Software Engineering, Savers October 2016 – September 2022 Title progression: Application Architect Lead (2016) → Senior Manager, Software Engineering (2018) → Associate Director, Software Engineering - Led Savers' move from mostly on-premise systems to cloud-native architecture on Microsoft Azure. - Built new cloud-native applications, migrated selected legacy systems, and connected cloud services to the remaining on-premise platforms. - Managed 20 engineers across three teams covering custom development, QA, DevOps, and enterprise integrations. - Designed and delivered a cloud-based inventory tracking and IoT system, state of the art in thrift retail, that improved visibility and operational insight across the business. - Set architecture direction across teams for microservices, maintainability, fault tolerance, and observability. - Worked with business stakeholders and project managers to clarify requirements and make delivery more predictable. - Grew the team through coaching, stretch assignments, and goal-based one-on-ones. ### Principal Software Engineer, Consultant, Starbucks, via Sirrus7 · part-time, alongside Savers August 2020 – March 2021 - Gave senior technical guidance on a large marketing platform migration, mainly designing a reusable integration abstraction layer. - Set up Azure development patterns and CI/CD pipelines for the teams to share. ### Software Engineering Lead, iTrellis February 2015 – October 2016 - Led a team of consultants building a custom C# and JavaScript web application alongside the client's in-house developers. - Managed the client relationship and designed solutions for the client's needs, including refactoring for scalability. ### Engineering Supervisor, Senior Software Engineer, Emerson Process Management September 2007 – February 2015 - Led globally distributed teams building manufacturing software used at multiple sites. Was design authority and owned global change control. - Led a multi-year redesign of a core manufacturing software platform used for verification, testing, and calibration across a broad product line. - Built and maintained data-heavy systems on Microsoft SQL Server, connected software to manufacturing equipment, and kept legacy platforms running during the move to newer architectures. ## Education - B.S. Computer Science, Michigan Technological University, May 2007 (GPA 3.51 / 4.0) ## Skills - Languages & frameworks: C#, .NET, TypeScript, JavaScript, Scala, Angular, ASP.NET - Cloud & DevOps: AWS, Azure, Azure Functions, Docker, Kubernetes, ARM templates, CI/CD - Data: SQL Server, T-SQL, Entity Framework, Redis, Tableau - Tooling: Azure DevOps, Git, Selenium, NUnit, MSTest, Visual Studio - Architecture: Microservices, distributed systems, fault tolerance, observability, multi-threaded programming - Leadership: Team development, mentorship, process optimization, strategic planning, Agile, Scrum, Kanban ## FamJet FamJet (https://www.famjet.com/) is a free family travel planning service that makes packing lists based on the destination, the trip, and the ages of the people traveling. FamJet LLC is incorporated in Washington State (2025). Chris and his wife come up with the ideas and make product decisions together. Chris does most of the development, using AI-assisted tools, and deployed it on Vercel. His wife owns the packing lists and marketing. Case study: https://chriseckhout.com/famjet