‘You own your career’: How AWS fuels internal ambition and growth

Growth means something different to all of us. It might be following a steady path to a lifelong dream, transitioning from individual motivation to leading a team, expanding a skill set, or recognising when to change direction. Whatever growth is to us as individuals, it’s a vital part of a fulfilling career. 

For AWS employees like intelligence manager Donald Cowart and commissioning engineer Theresa Sushama, career growth at the company has been all about autonomy and feeling empowered to strive for change, in whatever form it might take. 

“AWS has the idea that you own your own career, where you as an employee drive where you want to be,” says Cowart. 

For Cowart and Sushama, it’s an idea that has taken them both on dynamic journeys with AWS – and those journeys aren’t over yet.

Theresa Sushama

These days, Sushama is one of the commissioning engineers in AWS’s data centre capacity delivery team. As a commissioning engineer, she leads the critical final phase that transforms a data centre from a construction site to a digital powerhouse.

Her role involves systematically bringing complex electrical, mechanical, and control systems online while ensuring the critical power and cooling infrastructure operate seamlessly.

This position requires strong project management skills — effectively balancing tight timelines with careful coordination across multiple engineering disciplines. When intricate technical challenges arise, she leverages deep analytical expertise and extensive field experience to develop innovative solutions that advance industry standards and ensure data centres meet the rigorous demands of our interconnected world.

While she’s loving her current role, Sushama’s AWS career began elsewhere, joining the company as an electrical field engineer in the data centre design engineering organisation. The transition between roles, says Sushama, was a gradual and purposeful move to find new challenges and make a deeper impact, helped along by internal pathways and encouragement.

“My motivation [to transition roles] stemmed from identifying growth opportunities in a new area that aligned more closely with my long-term career aspirations, which I actively discussed with my manager to identify skill gaps and align on a development plan,” Sushama says.

While she’s settled in her role, Sushama isn’t resting on her laurels, working hard to make the most of her career growth. “Even after fully moving into the commissioning engineer role, the learning didn’t stop – it became a process of continuous discovery and self-improvement.”

Donald Cowart

Cowart’s time with AWS has been a globetrotting success. He started in Seattle onboarding engineers into AWS Dedicated Cloud regions, before eventually landing in Sydney, where he was a systems engineering manager, building new regions and getting them operational.

“This is exciting because I am working with new internal services and new challenges all the time,” Cowart says. “This also means hiring a lot of engineers to work in these new regions and seeing how they work and grow in their careers here in AWS.”

Cowart’s AWS growth journey has seen him transition from an individual contributor to team leadership and coaching roles. Now, having worked with the AWS Intelligence Initiative across multiple countries, Cowart leads a team, helping to onboard engineers and ensuring they get all the information they need to do their job at a high level.

“This gives them an immersive introduction to a service team building on what they have recently learned,” Cowart says. “We then focus on wider team needs, aligning them to their work. I am constantly talking with engineers on plans and how they fit into the overall work of the region. It is exciting and a highly dynamic environment.”

How AWS helps foster growth

Cowart and Sushama have both benefited from a growth mindset at AWS. For Sushama, this growth isn’t just about personal goals – it’s part of the fabric of the company. 

“AWS is deeply committed to employee growth, offering extensive learning opportunities such as internal training programs and workshops, mentorship programs, technical deep-dive sessions led by subject matter experts, and leadership development programs and growth conversations,” Sushama says.

Alongside self-determined learning platforms like AWS Skill Builder, one key feature of AWS for both Cowart and Sushama is the way the business encourages upskilling and internal movement, actively playing a role to facilitate employees moving to new roles if they desire. It’s a philosophy that’s held in high regard at AWS. 

“This strong emphasis on internal mobility stems from AWS’s belief that different perspectives and diverse experiences enrich the organisation,” says Sushama. “They recognise that employees who move between roles bring unique insights and skills gained from their previous positions, ultimately fostering innovation and a more well-rounded workforce.”

Cowart says that cultural values such as ownership and bias to action are part of the reason why AWS employees (himself and Sushama being just two examples) are supported to grow and achieve their own career ambitions. Ultimately, each individual is trusted to follow the path of their choosing.

“I depend on engineers telling me where they want to be, so I can make sure I align the right work to them, allowing them to grow where needed or giving them the projects to show off their skills and how they are working at the level they want to be,” Cowart says.

At AWS, your career path is yours to own, your projects are yours to shape, and your impact reaches across the globe. How would you like to make an impact that changes not just your career, but the world itself? Click here to find out more!