Top 16 AWS Recruitment Specialists in the World

Hiring for the AWS ecosystem splits in two: there are the recruiters working inside Amazon to staff its cloud and AI teams, and the independent agencies and coaches who help everyone else land or fill those roles.

The 16 recruiters below span both camps, from AWS’s own technical and executive recruiters to the founders of cloud-specialist firms and the YouTubers demystifying the Amazon interview. Here’s who they are and what each focuses on.

1. Mark Metz
2. Heather van Maarth
3. Jay Shankar
4. Stephen Telford
5. Shanna Salazar
6. Becky Laurence
7. Jake Jorgovan
8. Brittany Fox
9. Navya Nagendra Kumar
10. Anthony Dixon
11. Zoë Morris
12. Chase Parlee
13. Holly Lee
14. Kelly Zhou
15. Nicky Ngo
16. Ben Whitmarsh

Mark Metz

Get hired with AI: a conversation with Mark Metz.

Nationality: American

Mark founded NerdRabbit (a ReluTech company), a platform that connects organizations with AWS-certified professionals for contract and full-time work.

The idea was to put machine learning to work in recruiting, matching cloud engineers and AWS DevOps talent to employers more efficiently, and it gained traction in the AWS partner community as a fix for the cloud skills gap.

Now Chairman after a stint as CEO, he speaks regularly on cloud hiring trends.

• Linkedin: Mark Metz

Heather van Maarth

Nationality: Dutch

Creative hiring strategies are essential in today’s tech landscape. At AWS, we’re not just looking for talent, we’re seeking innovators who can push the boundaries of what cloud AI can achieve.

Heather leads talent acquisition for AWS’s Generative AI Innovation Center across EMEA, building teams of machine-learning scientists, cloud AI engineers, and data experts behind AWS’s AI services.

She’s vocal about needing creative hiring strategies to match these advanced domains, and her role is hands-on as much as strategic, she’s out engaging top AI talent directly, not just setting policy.

• Linkedin: Heather van Maarth

Jay Shankar

Nationality: American

Jay is a Vice President of Talent Acquisition at Amazon who scaled global hiring across AWS and now leads talent acquisition for Amazon’s AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) team.

Her work is large-scale workforce growth, everything from cloud engineers to leadership roles, with a strong emphasis on candidate experience, inclusive hiring, and a continuous-learning culture as the team expands to meet cloud demand.

• Linkedin: Jay Shankar

Stephen Telford

Nationality: British

Stephen used to recruit for AWS; now he works the other side as an independent “reverse recruiter” and career coach, helping cloud professionals land roles.

He draws on that insider experience (and a military background) to advise on personal branding and job-search strategy, and his humorous, practical content on AWS career paths has made him a LinkedIn Top Voice in Careers with a sizable following.

• Linkedin: Stephen Telford

Shanna Salazar

Nationality: American

Shanna is an Executive Recruiter at AWS running searches for Director- and VP-level leadership across its business units. She rose fast as the highest-producing recruiter in her division, and now focuses on finding experienced cloud executives and technical leaders who fit Amazon’s leadership principles.

AWS has featured her in its talent-acquisition spotlights, and colleagues point to how consistently and quickly she closes its most strategic hires.

• Linkedin: Shanna Salazar

Becky Laurence

Nationality: American

Becky recruits for AWS’s Cloud Support and infrastructure teams, and got more visible by appearing in AWS’s official “Cloud Support Engineering Careers” YouTube series, offering a recruiter’s-eye view to aspiring engineers.

She shares interview tips and career advice publicly, and has a knack for spotting people who’ll thrive in AWS’s customer-obsessed culture across operations and support roles.

• Linkedin: Becky Laurence

Jake Jorgovan

Nationality: American

Jake is an agency owner and prolific content creator who’s mapped the AWS recruiting scene in depth, including a widely read rundown of top AWS recruiters and agencies.

A background in B2B consulting and podcasting helps him read industry trends, and he advises companies on sharpening their AWS talent strategy, with an emphasis on understanding both the technology and the business before placing anyone from DevOps to cloud consulting.

• Linkedin: Jake Jorgovan

Brittany Fox

Nationality: American

Brittany is Co-Founder and CEO of Focus GTS, a niche cloud talent agency, and a LinkedIn Top Voice in recruitment. She personally advises companies on hiring DevOps engineers, cloud architects, and AI specialists, and founded “She Created,” an initiative supporting women in tech.

She’s grown Focus GTS into an award-winning team known for connecting diverse AWS talent with employers nationwide.

• Linkedin: Brittany Fox

Navya Nagendra Kumar

Nationality: Indian

Navya is a Technical Recruiter at AWS who often serves as a candidate’s first point of contact for IT and engineering roles.

She proactively sources diverse candidates and mentors them through Amazon’s demanding hiring steps, drawing on both agency and corporate experience to fill roles across cloud support, development, and product management.

Her LinkedIn is full of testimonials to how diligent and personable she is through the process.

• Linkedin: Navya Nagendra Kumar

Anthony Dixon

Nationality: American

Anthony leads a team of technical recruiters at AWS focused on cloud-computing roles, and describes himself as a people-connector helping talent “find their path in cloud computing.”

His remit runs across AWS divisions, from core utility computing through emerging tech, and he’s active in employer branding, speaking at university career fairs and industry panels, while mentoring junior recruiters inside Amazon’s talent org.

• Linkedin: Anthony Dixon

Zoë Morris

Nationality: British

Zoë is President of Frank Recruitment Group, one of the world’s largest cloud-talent staffing firms, which includes the AWS-specialist brand Jefferson Frank.

She oversees 20+ offices worldwide across AWS, Azure, and Salesforce recruitment, and Staffing Industry Analysts has recognized her as an influential leader, particularly for diversity and inclusion work.

Jefferson Frank has connected thousands of AWS professionals with employers, informed by its annual AWS careers survey, and Zoë speaks often on hiring trends and women in tech.

• Linkedin: Zoë Morris

Chase Parlee

Nationality: American

Hiring for AI and Machine Learning is about more than just technical expertise. It’s about finding people who are truly passionate about pushing the boundaries of innovation and making a real impact in the cloud space.

Chase is a Client Lead Recruiter for AWS’s AI and Machine Learning teams, running end-to-end hiring from California for roles like Applied Scientists, ML Engineers, and AI Product Managers.

He’s known for a white-glove candidate experience, prepping people for technical interviews through to closing offers, and AWS featured him in a recruiting spotlight on the intricacies of hiring in advanced domains.

His command of the interview process is a big part of how AWS scales its AI work.

• Linkedin: Chase Parlee

Holly Lee

Nationality: American

Holly spent 20+ years as a recruiting manager at Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, training hiring teams and bar raisers, and now runs her own coaching business.

Her YouTube channel (around 50k subscribers) walks candidates through Amazon’s hiring process and Leadership Principles, with detailed videos on interview prep, resumes, and salary negotiation, plus live “AMA Fridays.” It’s made her one of the most prominent public voices on cracking AWS and FAANG interviews.

• Linkedin: Holly Lee

Kelly Zhou

Nationality: Chinese

Kelly is a Senior Sourcing Recruiter at AWS specializing in cloud-engineering talent for its Utility Computing division, and was named a Top Sourcing Recruiter at AWS in 2024 for surfacing genuinely scarce candidates.

She works infrastructure, data-center operations, and research-science roles, often across global talent pools, and is bilingual and data-minded, using analytics to keep her sourcing pipeline both efficient and diverse.

• Linkedin: Kelly Zhou

Nicky Ngo

Nationality: American

Nicky recruits AI and ML talent for AWS and is herself an AWS-Certified Cloud Practitioner, an unusual combination that gives her credibility with the highly skilled candidates she hires (think AWS SageMaker or deep-learning expertise).

She lists her AWS Cloud certifications openly as part of understanding what candidates actually do, is active in community events on breaking into AWS AI roles, and regularly celebrates the people she’s placed.

• Linkedin: Nicky Ngo

Ben Whitmarsh

Nationality: British

Ben is Founder and Managing Director of ReVybe IT, a recruitment business focused on DevOps and cloud hiring. Most of the roles he fills map to AWS-heavy stacks, cloud engineering, DevOps, platform teams, rather than generalist IT.

He also co-founded the DevOps Society, a UK meetup network for DevOps practitioners, which keeps him close to the engineers and hiring managers building cloud delivery teams.

• Linkedin: Ben Whitmarsh

Sum Up

Between them, the recruiters above place much of the AWS talent that companies depend on: cloud engineers, architects, and DevOps leaders. The catch is access.

They tend to be selective, booked solid, or expensive. That’s where EchoGlobal comes in: with specialized cloud-hiring expertise and global reach, we help fast-growing companies connect with the right AWS people quickly.

Note: We’ve dedicated significant time and effort to creating and verifying this curated list of top professionals. However, if you believe a correction or addition is needed, feel free to reach out. We’ll gladly review and update the page.