Program Manager, RBS Defect Reduction
Summary
Owns a global program to reduce customer returns by identifying defects, building data-driven business cases, and partnering with tech, finance, and ops teams to eliminate root causes and improve supply chain efficiency.
Amazon strives to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they want to buy online. Retail Business Services (RBS) accelerates Amazon's growth by improving customer and Selling Partner (SP) experiences, while optimizing costs across Stores WW. RBS operates at the intersection of retail, operations, technology, and finance, ensuring Amazon’s systems and processes scale reliably while maintaining a high-quality customer and selling-partner experience.
Returns Reduction as part of Cost to Serve (CtS) BU is a specialized program within RBS focused on driving down overall Return Rate for both Retail and FBA channels. Returns Reduction Program focuses on Upstream defect elimination with focus on defect identification and defect elimination and partners with System Owners, Category Teams, FC ACES, Finance, CS, and abuse-related programs to uncover true drivers and remove them systematically. The team builds mechanisms that strengthen upstream defect visibility, and enable consistent governance and contributing directly to improved Free Cash Flow and scalable business growth.
This role will focus on identification and prioritization of high-impact defect opportunities and will own and define the roadmap for elimination of the problem space end to end. They will do this by building trusted partnerships with key stakeholders across technology, finance, operations and earning alignment to pursue defect elimination opportunities and influencing senior leaders through compelling, data-driven business cases. This role requires an individual who is comfortable in diving deep into complex data sets and presenting strategic recommendations to leadership up to three tiers above level. The candidate will bring strong business and supply chain acumen, a bias for action, and the strategic vision by directly contributing to improved cost to serve performance and driving scalable growth across Amazon Stores worldwide.
Why You’ll Love This Role
• Customer Impact: You’ll lead critical projects that remove defects, improves customer experience and directly influence Amazon’s supply chain cost, driving measurable results.
• Strategic Influence: Collaborate across global teams, including technology, finance, operations to shape strategies that focuses on improving customer satisfaction.
• Data-Driven Innovation: Leverage analytics to uncover insights and optimize supply chain performance.
Key job responsibilities
• Deliver Results, Dive Deep: Conduct deep-dive analysis on customer returns data to identify and quantify top defect opportunities. Own execution of elimination initiatives end-to-end, escalating blockers and partnering with senior team members on prioritization.
• Ability to Influence: Build data-driven business cases for defect elimination opportunities and present recommendations to managers and cross-functional partners, using insights to influence team-level priorities and tradeoffs.
• Earn Trust: Build strong working relationships with immediate stakeholder groups; proactively communicate progress, risks, and findings to gain alignment on defect elimination priorities within your scope.
• Financial Collaboration: Work closely with finance partners to quantify returns impact, validate savings estimates, and ensure proposed initiatives align with the team's financial targets. Identify tradeoffs between near-term cost reduction and longer-term goals, surfacing recommendations to leadership.
• Stakeholder Communication: Coordinate stakeholder updates across project milestones, process changes, and escalations within your assigned programs, ensuring timely and clear communication. Provide analytical support to leaders on strategy documents, research requests, and data pulls as needed.
A day in the life
Defect Opportunity Identification: Leverage analytics tools and customer anecdotes to identify high-impact defect opportunities within the Returns space. Conduct root cause analysis to validate findings and develop use cases, applying judgment to prioritize based on customer impact, value, and feasibility of solutions.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with cross-functional teams across system-owning orgs, finance, operations, and supply chain to drive alignment on solution implementation. Proactively flag blockers, coordinate dependencies, and support delivery timelines within assigned programs.
• Leadership Communication: Communicate effectively with managers and senior stakeholders, presenting data-driven insights and recommendations to inform decision-making. Trusted to present findings and proposals to leaders one to two tiers above level, supporting alignment on program priorities
About the team
The RBS is an integral part of Amazon online product lifecycle and buying operations. RBS Return reduction team functioning under CX-Business unit. The primary responsibility of the RBS return reduction team is to reduce returns that result in negative consumer experiences. This includes identifying the causes of returns and collaborating with the appropriate teams to eliminate defects. Launch tech solutions to 'Find' and 'Fix' for non-eliminated root causes, or Build scalable tech solutions for Selling Partners for self-remediation, while refining policies in collaboration with relevant teams.
Returns Reduction as part of Cost to Serve (CtS) BU is a specialized program within RBS focused on driving down overall Return Rate for both Retail and FBA channels. Returns Reduction Program focuses on Upstream defect elimination with focus on defect identification and defect elimination and partners with System Owners, Category Teams, FC ACES, Finance, CS, and abuse-related programs to uncover true drivers and remove them systematically. The team builds mechanisms that strengthen upstream defect visibility, and enable consistent governance and contributing directly to improved Free Cash Flow and scalable business growth.
This role will focus on identification and prioritization of high-impact defect opportunities and will own and define the roadmap for elimination of the problem space end to end. They will do this by building trusted partnerships with key stakeholders across technology, finance, operations and earning alignment to pursue defect elimination opportunities and influencing senior leaders through compelling, data-driven business cases. This role requires an individual who is comfortable in diving deep into complex data sets and presenting strategic recommendations to leadership up to three tiers above level. The candidate will bring strong business and supply chain acumen, a bias for action, and the strategic vision by directly contributing to improved cost to serve performance and driving scalable growth across Amazon Stores worldwide.
Why You’ll Love This Role
• Customer Impact: You’ll lead critical projects that remove defects, improves customer experience and directly influence Amazon’s supply chain cost, driving measurable results.
• Strategic Influence: Collaborate across global teams, including technology, finance, operations to shape strategies that focuses on improving customer satisfaction.
• Data-Driven Innovation: Leverage analytics to uncover insights and optimize supply chain performance.
Key job responsibilities
• Deliver Results, Dive Deep: Conduct deep-dive analysis on customer returns data to identify and quantify top defect opportunities. Own execution of elimination initiatives end-to-end, escalating blockers and partnering with senior team members on prioritization.
• Ability to Influence: Build data-driven business cases for defect elimination opportunities and present recommendations to managers and cross-functional partners, using insights to influence team-level priorities and tradeoffs.
• Earn Trust: Build strong working relationships with immediate stakeholder groups; proactively communicate progress, risks, and findings to gain alignment on defect elimination priorities within your scope.
• Financial Collaboration: Work closely with finance partners to quantify returns impact, validate savings estimates, and ensure proposed initiatives align with the team's financial targets. Identify tradeoffs between near-term cost reduction and longer-term goals, surfacing recommendations to leadership.
• Stakeholder Communication: Coordinate stakeholder updates across project milestones, process changes, and escalations within your assigned programs, ensuring timely and clear communication. Provide analytical support to leaders on strategy documents, research requests, and data pulls as needed.
A day in the life
Defect Opportunity Identification: Leverage analytics tools and customer anecdotes to identify high-impact defect opportunities within the Returns space. Conduct root cause analysis to validate findings and develop use cases, applying judgment to prioritize based on customer impact, value, and feasibility of solutions.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with cross-functional teams across system-owning orgs, finance, operations, and supply chain to drive alignment on solution implementation. Proactively flag blockers, coordinate dependencies, and support delivery timelines within assigned programs.
• Leadership Communication: Communicate effectively with managers and senior stakeholders, presenting data-driven insights and recommendations to inform decision-making. Trusted to present findings and proposals to leaders one to two tiers above level, supporting alignment on program priorities
About the team
The RBS is an integral part of Amazon online product lifecycle and buying operations. RBS Return reduction team functioning under CX-Business unit. The primary responsibility of the RBS return reduction team is to reduce returns that result in negative consumer experiences. This includes identifying the causes of returns and collaborating with the appropriate teams to eliminate defects. Launch tech solutions to 'Find' and 'Fix' for non-eliminated root causes, or Build scalable tech solutions for Selling Partners for self-remediation, while refining policies in collaboration with relevant teams.