Amazon’s latest round of job cuts has once again placed the company’s leadership decisions under intense public and employee scrutiny. The announcement that roughly 16,000 roles could be eliminated under a cost-cutting and efficiency drive known internally as Project Dawn did not arrive through a carefully staged corporate disclosure. Instead, it surfaced after a draft internal email, referencing potential layoffs and a related meeting, was inadvertently shared with a wider group of employees than intended.
The message, associated with a senior Amazon Web Services executive, spread quickly inside the company, triggering confusion, anxiety, and renewed debate about transparency during large-scale restructurings. At the centre of this episode is Colleen Aubrey, a long-serving Amazon leader whose career spans two decades, multiple continents, and some of the company’s most commercially significant divisions.
How the Project Dawn Email Triggered Amazon’s Latest Layoff Fallout
The existence of Project Dawn became widely known only after the internal email circulated beyond its intended audience. The message referred to a meeting connected to the initiative, which focuses on improving efficiency across Amazon by flattening management structures, reducing layers of bureaucracy, and accelerating decision-making. Shortly after the email was sent, the meeting itself was cancelled, but by then the information had already spread across internal channels, prompting speculation about imminent job losses.
Business Insider reported that the email originated from Colleen Aubrey, a senior executive at AWS, although it may have been sent by an assistant using her account. Regardless of who physically pressed send, the association with Aubrey’s name lent the message immediate weight. Employees who received it began questioning whether their inclusion on the distribution list signalled that their roles or teams were under review.
In large organizations such as Amazon, internal emails from senior leaders are often scrutinized for subtext, and this one was no exception. The timing amplified the impact. This was Amazon’s second major round of layoffs in a relatively short period, following the elimination of around 14,000 roles in October 2025. For many employees, particularly in AWS and technical roles, the accidental disclosure felt less like a routine miscommunication and more like confirmation that another significant contraction was imminent.
While Amazon later clarified aspects of Project Dawn and reiterated its commitment to supporting affected staff, the episode highlighted how internal communication missteps can quickly escalate into reputational and morale challenges. Project Dawn itself is not unique within the tech sector. Many large technology companies have pursued similar efficiency drives as growth has slowed and investor pressure has increased.
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What set this situation apart was the manner in which information reached employees, bypassing the usual structured announcements and leaving space for uncertainty. The incident also drew external attention, with media outlets framing the story around both the scale of the potential layoffs and the human impact of learning about them through an unintended email.
Who Is Colleen Aubrey and How She Rose Through Amazon’s Ranks
Colleen Aubrey’s association with Amazon dates back to 2005, making her one of the company’s more experienced senior leaders. She began her Amazon career in London as a sales manager for Amazon UK, a period when the company was still expanding aggressively in international markets. During her time in the UK, Aubrey was credited with helping grow Amazon’s market share, building commercial relationships, and strengthening the company’s presence in a highly competitive retail environment.
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Her success in London led to a move to Amazon’s Seattle headquarters, where her responsibilities expanded significantly. Over the years, Aubrey took on leadership roles that placed her at the intersection of technology, advertising, and global operations. Between 2016 and 2021, she led Amazon’s advertising business across ten countries, overseeing a division that has since become one of the company’s most profitable segments. Amazon Advertising grew rapidly during this period, benefiting from the company’s vast data resources and its ability to integrate ads directly into the shopping experience.
In 2021, Aubrey was promoted to Senior Vice President of Advertising Products and Technology, a role that placed her among Amazon’s top executives. Two years earlier, in 2019, she had already joined Amazon’s elite S-team, the small group of senior leaders who work closely with the chief executive and shape the company’s long-term strategy. Membership in the S-team is both a mark of influence and a signal of trust, reflecting a leader’s ability to manage complex, global operations.
Since May 2024, Aubrey has served as Senior Vice President at AWS Solutions, overseeing parts of Amazon’s cloud computing arm. AWS remains Amazon’s most profitable business unit, and leadership roles within it carry substantial responsibility. Aubrey’s move into AWS signalled the company’s confidence in her ability to manage large-scale technical organizations, even though much of her earlier career focused on advertising and sales rather than infrastructure.
Before joining Amazon, Aubrey built her career in the recruitment and job search industry. She began working at HotJobs in 1999 and later spent time at CareerOne, an Australian job search portal. Her academic background includes studies at the University of Canberra and Macquarie University. This mix of commercial, technical-adjacent, and international experience has shaped her leadership profile within Amazon, making her a versatile executive capable of operating across different business lines.
What Project Dawn Means for AWS and Amazon Employees Going Forward
Project Dawn is designed to streamline Amazon’s operations at a time when the company is reassessing its cost structure and growth priorities. According to internal descriptions referenced in the email, the initiative aims to remove management layers, reduce bureaucratic processes, and enable teams to move faster in delivering value to customers. These goals align with Amazon’s long-standing leadership principles, particularly its emphasis on efficiency, ownership, and customer obsession.
The practical consequences, however, are significant. The current plan involves cutting approximately 16,000 jobs, affecting a range of teams across both AWS and Amazon’s retail operations. Within AWS, impacted areas include cloud services such as Bedrock, Redshift, and ProServe. These units are closely tied to enterprise customers and advanced technical offerings, meaning the layoffs are not limited to peripheral functions but reach into core product teams.
Many of the affected roles are software engineering positions, underscoring that even highly skilled technical staff are not immune to restructuring. Beyond AWS, retail divisions are also expected to see reductions. Teams associated with Prime subscriptions and the Delivery Experience have been identified as part of the scope, reflecting Amazon’s efforts to optimize both its digital services and its logistics operations.
While Amazon has confirmed the overall scale of the layoffs, it has not released a detailed breakdown by country or region, leaving employees in different markets uncertain about how Project Dawn will affect them locally. The accidental email disclosure has added another layer to the situation. For employees, learning about potential job cuts through an unintended message can undermine trust in leadership communication.
For the company, it illustrates the risks inherent in managing sensitive information during large reorganizations. Even when strategic objectives are clear, the way they are communicated can shape employee perception as much as the decisions themselves. For Colleen Aubrey, the episode has placed her name prominently in public reporting, even though the underlying strategy reflects broader corporate priorities rather than individual action.
As a senior leader within AWS, her association with Project Dawn highlights the role that top executives play in executing efficiency initiatives, as well as the scrutiny they face when internal processes falter. As Amazon moves forward with Project Dawn, the focus will remain on how effectively it balances cost discipline with employee morale, operational continuity, and its long-term ambition to remain a dominant force in both cloud computing and global e-commerce.
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