Amazon has seen one of the largest layoffs this year, organising a massive organisational overhaul with the elimination of more than 14,000 corporate roles since its announcement last month. At the time, Amazon said that the layoffs would take care of the corporate divisions and didn’t give out statistics on which departments had been affected. Thanks to a recent regulatory filing, it now seems that the engineering division was the one affected the most.
The regulatory filings showed job cuts spanning nearly every major division, including AWS, retail, advertising, and devices. Documents submitted across several key US states reveal that nearly 40% of the laid-off positions were held by engineers. This focus on the core technical roles has raised eyebrows across the industry, especially as CEO Andy Jassy continues to push Amazon to become a leaner and more agile ‘startup’, focusing on aggressive investment in emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Amazon layoffs favoured 40% engineers
The regulatory filings under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act in states like New York, California, New Jersey, and Washington indicate that engineering positions consisted of the largest share in the 4,700 roles that were let go in those jurisdictions. Note that these figures represent only a fraction of the overall 14,000 job cuts, but they highlight the trend of Amazon letting go of engineers – a core part of the company’s resources.
The significant reduction in the engineering department stands in contrast to Amazon’s simultaneous resource reallocation toward AI. Although the company states that AI was not the primary factor behind the majority of job eliminations, the overall objective, according to Amazon, is to simplify organisational structure and improve speed of execution. Jassy has previously suggested that AI-driven efficiencies are likely to lead to a smaller corporate workforce over the long term.
This restructuring effort, which is considered the most significant in Amazon’s 31-year history, extends a trend seen throughout the tech sector. According to industry trackers, huge cash reserves and rising profits across the industry have still managed to lay off over 113,000 roles across 231 tech companies in 2025 alone.
Is Amazon going to rely more on AI?
For Amazon, the layoffs are a major part of Jassy’s multi-year strategy to streamline the layers and improve efficiency. However, Jassy has also warned that the further adoption of AI will also lead to more elimination of highly skilled engineering talent in a bid to maximise efficiency. Amazon is reportedly preparing for another round of job reductions slated for January, suggesting that the restructuring efforts aimed at achieving corporate efficiency are far from over. Will it affect the engineering division again this time? Only time will tell.
