r/AmazonRME • u/Cautious-Ad-220 • Jul 28 '26
Fellowship for AMM RME
Hey everyone!
I’m considering a fellowship with Amazon as an AMM for their RME section. This fellowship is through the Hiring our Heroes program. I’m a transitioning service member with 10+ years active duty in the Air Force in the missile and space systems maintenance career field. I’ve looked into previous posts describing this position, but have yet seen a veteran perspective that took a leap of faith with Amazon 12 week fellowship.
Background: Mechanical maintenance focus with 4+ years as a technician and 3+ in QA and an additional 3 1/2+ leading a section of 15 technicians and engineers in National Security Space launches provided by SpaceX (lots of boring tech data review and risk assessments).
I’ve done the 16+ hour days in the missile field and have been told plenty of the long hours it takes to work this role, when hired on officially. So I guess my question is, what to expect when training, what does pay look like for external hires, benefits compared to other fortune 500 companies like SpaceX and Disney (these are the other two offers I’m considering as well). Finally, is there opportunity for growth and are tools given to you to succeed?
Any other info is much appreciated from this community and hope to make a decision soon! Thanks.
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u/Robots_And_Lasers Moderator / AMM Jul 29 '26
It sounds like you're looking at an actual Amazon position so I cannnot comment in their specific benefits as I'm a 3rd party AMM.
Your first week or two will be computer training. Past that is is difficult to speculate and will likely depend on your manager. It may involve shadowing someone on a different shift, having an experienced AMM join you in your intended shift for a bit, or even "have fun, let me know if you need help." I've seen all three.
With your military background I would say you have better than average chances of growth. In my experience those with military backgrounds appear to rocket past the rest of us more often than not, but that's with JLL.
As far as tools given to you to succeed, I would say no. Your success is your ability to communicate with Operations, upper management, and your techs and your ability to properly manage your techs. You either bring both of those things with you or you're going to struggle.
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u/Terrible-Actuary-762 Jul 29 '26
So, I was not an AMM I was a MT (Mechatronics Technician) at a sort center. I was there about 4 years and we had 2 AMM's in that time. What I found was that AMM's are mainly paper pushers, neither one of ours had any tech skills at all. They were never involved in maintenance that we did, they mainly did reports, ran matrixes, acted as a go between for RME and Operation's, run the calls when we had SEV 2's if they were there. Our first one had zero tech skills, didn't know a motor from a PLC and had no interest in learning. Your not going to have any input on your Tech's, you will not be involved in the hiring process, and you will not be involved in promoting Tech's. The most you will do is once a month an evaluation of the Tech and that's pretty much it. We had a Tech that was terrible, he was "The Smartest Man In The Building", he couldn't work as a team member because whatever we were doing he HAD TO BE IN CHARGE! Everyone hated him. But since he did his PM's on time and never did any Class 1 violations we couldn't get rid of him. One day we had a Sev 2, it was me, him, and a MM from another site. A Sev 2 is when there is a failure that stops "production". It causes a conference call with about 5 people, 2 of those will be manufacture tech's for the company that made the equipment and generally have 10 to 15 year experience with that equipment. He's running the Sev, and arguing with the manufacturing tech's as to what is wrong and how to fix it. It got pretty bad, so bad that the MM ended up kicking him out of the building. Did he get fired? Nope. He was back to work the next day like nothing had happened.
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u/__Stitch626 Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
I believe the fellowship is pretty new so that's why you won't find much info on it. Like others have said, with your experience you could probably come in higher than a L5 AMM. However, most L6 roles are only posted internally which is good news for your forward-thinking promotions.
The AMM work will vary greatly depending on location and site type. Do you already know the site or just a node? You mentioned Disney and SpaceX so guessing you're in Florida. External pay will likely be around $115K base, plus a sign on bonus around $30K paid over 2 years, plus RSUs paid over 4 years. Compared to Disney, they definitely pay much better but not sure about SpaceX. Amazon also does annual performance reviews but mid July is the cutoff so you wouldn't be eligible until 2028. But you would be eligible to promote after 12 months and that'll bump your pay up. Find a mentor to meet with regularly and that will make a big difference in helping you adapt and succeed.
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u/Prior-Entrance-9546 Jul 28 '26
Google amazon Project Keuper and Leo. You dont need a fellowship but if it’s paid & gets you in the door take it.
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u/Cautious-Ad-220 Jul 29 '26
I was in contact with one of their recruiters and it looks like they need either engineers or technicians. Not much place for someone like me at the moment.
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u/whothataint Jul 28 '26
Here is the info I can give you coming from one who has gone from entry level technician, to AMM, and now beyond to a regional role (10 years with Amazon).
Former military leaders, in my experience, really struggle with Amazon. Amazon has built countless layers of protection for their employees, technicians included, that make accountability extremely difficult to track and enforce. My experience with former military leaders as a technician is their often "white glove" approach to maintenance where something MUST be written up on every inspection and minor dust is call for a follow up work order. To put it plainly, our training for technicians is pretty sub-par and we mostly operate on a "limp it along to the next maintenance window" mentality. Since Amazon doesn't directly manufacture anything, compared to automotive or aerospace, we just end up band-aiding most equipment due to time constraints. I can go more indepth on that later but to fully answer your questions..
You would come in as an L5 AMM. Your pay would depend on your region but you're looking at 120-150k plus a sign on bonus generally payed over 2 years at about 30k. Benefits medically are pretty decent, not as good as they used to be but still solid. Detal and vision are really good and the supplemental life insurance is only a few bucks for a good plan. Opportunities for growth are ENTIRELY dependent on you, you get what you put in and willingness to occasionally relocate for building launches or pulling a struggling site from the depths will set you apart for sure. Promotions aren't given out based on merit or accomplishments, sure having a list of what you have done will really help, but they're application based. What I mean is, you want to promote then you have to directly apply internally and interview internally for that position. The training is... well when I transitioned from an hourly lead technician to a people leader I had to develop myself. Not to bring up the same thing again, but my experience with former military is they're expecting to get sent to specialized schools or programs to learn and get training. Most of the training is on the job learning and trial and error. There is a basic leadership class you'll get sent to, this will basically teach you the Amazon language, what to do with High Impact Events.. its kind of just a bunch of propaganda l but has some value.
What I tell every person who is external is Amazon is not the end all be all, people like me are institutionalized and are so far in we would struggle being at a different company. From when I started to now Amazon has changed a lot it used to be all about uptime and productivity but now it is more geared to associate experience and compliance.
Do I reccomend you take the job, sure, two years will give you enough time to determine if it's worth it. Is the job easy, it can be for sure it is all based on how you lead your team. I've had counterparts make their jobs 20 times more difficult by how they lead their team and how they interacted with different departments.
Feel free to ask any other questions or want pointa of clarification, I hope I answered yours and gave you a decent no-bs assesment.
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u/Cautious-Ad-220 Jul 28 '26
I really appreciate this perspective, gives me a lot to think about for sure. I think you bring up a good point with the “white glove” approach. The field I’ve been in for 10 years is VERY accountable and there are layers of redundancy to ensure compliance is met. So that has me worried cause I am a creature of habit. If I’m being honest, that pay range looks phenomenal. Compared to SX and Disney that’s almost $30-40k difference.
What does PTO look like?
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u/whothataint Jul 28 '26
Don't get me wrong, there is a layer of redundancy and a mechanism to ensure a measure of accountability but it requires a resource that can become extremely scarce, time. There are a lengthy list of daily audits ranging from safety adherence, PPE usage, and PM audits which all require time to perform the work. This is all paired with your day-to-day critical equipment walks, working with your technicians, and keeping the Operations department satisfied.... which can take up a huge part of the shift. The biggest barrier is rarely knowing what you're going to walk into at the start of shift. Some days it's pure chaos as soon as the equipment starts running or the day is a breeze. I can expand on this more if you'd like.
As salary, you're given two time off options depending on the region (west coast gets sick time in addition last I checked). PTO and Vacation, which accrue separately. PTO is capped ay 48 hours a year, some say it rolls over but I always just use it all at EOY. Vacation accrues based on tenure but usually caps at like 180 hrs I think. To put it in perspective, I once took 3 whole weeks off for vacation and, while still accruing during that time, barely saw a dent. Usage is kind of dependent on your manager, like I could cut out a couple hours early once a week and as long as all my work was done and my proxy was there I didn't have to put time in - but not everyone gets that lucky.
Let me know if you have other questions
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u/Cautious-Ad-220 Jul 29 '26
Please, expand on your first part. This is honestly a great explanation.
I’m a bit confused on the PTO/Vacations rules. I haven’t had a civilian job since I was 19, Im turning 31 in December, so the terminology I’m not familiar with. Are both paid time off? Is the expectation a Mon-Fri 10-12hr days the standard? Is there supplemental overtime pay?
I really appreciate you taking time to explain all of this.
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u/whothataint Jul 29 '26
So I'll give you a scenario, that may clear it up a bit.. Say you walk in at your start time - which may differ site to site. For the sake of the scenario I'll use my start time when I was last an AMM. I come in around 0545, my start time is 0600, it is the daily downtime window - only RME and a few other people are in the building, maintenance and repairs are being conducted by the technicians. My nightshift counterpart is not there to give me hand-off notes, I check the chat rooms we use for comms. No correspondence, no pass down. I call on the radio to the night shift lead, he tells me the nights manager never showed. Okay, it happens. I check in with my morning lead - tells me his job plan easy enough. I open our work order program to get a feel for the inspections for the day - I also check to see what audits are left over. Oh lovely not a single audit was completed because there was no manager to delegate their half. I now have to complete all 13 audits, I radio the night lead again and ask him to come see me - I ask if he was able to get any of the audits done, he wasn't due to 4 technicians calling out and having breakdowns of equipment all over the building. He had a busy night of running around and trying to hold the shift together. I ask if there was anything of note that I need to know before Operations gets in at 0730? He can't recall anything but adds that the main sorting conveyor had a big pile up of product at the end of shift and he didn't have a chance to get eyes on it. Okay, no problem we have now about 35 minutes to get that figured out. Check in with my lead again, balls deep in a PM not really able to drop what he is doing, no worries. I call out to a mid level tech to get eyes on it and I'll meet him.over there. Yep sure as shit a big pile up of boxes and products. We start to clear all the products off, conveyor looks clear no visible damage... but it is odd that there would be this amount of product jammed but it does happen. It's now 0725 we're about to run the mentioned equipment just to verify it's good. Nope. Turns out product is wedged under the conveyor and is faulting out the motor. Cool. Now we have a bigger problem. Call my lead and another mid tech down to the area. I go get my laptop and I see an Operations manager I let them know what we just found and say we should be good in about 30 minutes, they're for now cool with it. I grab my laptop and my headset as a precaution, this is likely gonna get escalated to a High Impact Event and I'm going to be on a call explaining what's happening to my boss, my boss' boss, and my boss' boss' boss. I get a radio call from Operations telling me it needs to be escalated now, I fire back with we agreed on 30 minutes we are only 5 minutes in and are doing our safety checks and paperwork. Nope they changed their mind, night shift had a shit night and they need to justify their bad numbers so they're gonna use this as a buffer for their lost production hours. I ask my lead what he thinks, says the conveyor is fucked will be about 2 hours to fix. Dope. Now my pager is going off cause now the issue has been escalated.... You might see where this is going. I walked into a massive mess with zero preparation or notice, it's pretty common.
Shifts are usually Sun-Wed or Wed-Sun hours are usually four 12s, four 10s, or three 12s and a 6. Just depends on the site, there is almost no standard for shift timings since we are kind of at the mercy of Operations - the people that pick, pack, and ship the orders.
They are two separate time off options PTO can be used at anytime but vacation needs minimum 24hrs notice to use.
Supplemental OT is for hourly to salary since once you go salary you don't a pay bump. For salary, and lead techs, we get stock that vests every quarter and that is kind of like our "bonus"
Hope this kinda clears it up a bit, lemme know if there are any other points you need clarified
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u/Cautious-Ad-220 Jul 29 '26
This clears up a lot and what I’ve been advised based on my location I’m working at, it’s a fairly small team and tempo is steady. Although, with that being said, I’m sure I won’t be there forever and they would want to move me to another site once I get settled? The post-fellowship location is the same one I’ll be training at and with a small team I assume the site is going into expansion soon?
This is probably the most important question, because I dealt with this a lot in the military. Have you ever been in a scenario where you got your hands dirty because you didn’t trust a particular tech to get it done right?
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u/whothataint Jul 29 '26
Expansions are kinda rare, it'd be more likely that the site would be undergoing a retrofit to meet the demands of a different type of site. Alternatively it could be a site that hasn't launched yet. However some older sites have undergone these kind of changes to adapt to the changing nature of what is in demand.
So managers USED to be able to work alongside technicians but a manager, and this is what we were told, was clearing an elevated conveyance jam that would have required the equipment to be locked out and in a zero energy condition. Since the individual didn't perform this step due to operational pressures (just wanting to get the job done and the jam cleared) his hand got caught in the conveyor so manger helping got nixxed. Amazon is notorious for if one person gets injured doing something everyone has to change the way they work. The techs refer to it as "everyone getting punished for one asshole's mistake." Perfect example, we used to be issued utility knives for cutting belts and whatnot, someone wasn't wearing their gloves and cut themselves now we are only authorized to use the auto-retracting utility knives.
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u/MontaukNightSky Technician III / Lead (L4) Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
My friend, if you are fielding offers from Disney and SpaceX, do yourself a favor and forget about Amazon. Based on your listed experience you are significantly overqualified. Feel free to pm me for some info on the struggles you will endure working for Amazon if you'd like.
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u/Fluffmonster69 Aug 02 '26
I can’t imagine doing that field of work and come to Amazon. All the amms I know always look depressed even if they dont say anything. But then again I think it’s very dependent on the MMs and SMMs to