# Zakk Lefkowits

> Sr. Software Engineer | Tech Lead @ Amazon

Location: Richmond, Virginia, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/zakk

Product Minded Software Engineer & Tech Lead at Amazon building distributed systems at scale, backed by 9 years of professional software development experience. Owner of core services deployed to 100+ million devices. Avid tinkerer with AI-augmented engineering, building at incredible velocity.

Skilled in System Design, Rust, Android, Web Development, Typescript, AWS architecture and Java services.

## Work Experience
### Sr. Software Development Engineer @ Amazon
Jan 2022 – Present
Promoted to Senior Engineer (Q4 2022). Currently architecting data processing systems for the Fire TV Catalog. Previously led high-scale full stack device to server delivery for Fire TV Partner Integrations. Championing agentic coding tools to accelerate delivery.

Continue Watching Integration - Built new partner integration for 3P streaming apps to add titles to a common Continue Watching row.

- Led technical design of system to collect watch data from partner apps and upload for use in Fire TV experiences.
- Led development of on-device Rust service to efficiently process data and handle new features on commodity consumer hardware with less than 3MB memory footprint
- Built a cost-efficient distributed backend system on AWS to process up to 300,000 transactions per second while handling sensitive user and partner data

Live TV Integration - Improved and operated the existing Live TV integration on Fire TV

- Oversaw launches of 20+ Live TV (e.g., DirecTv) partners
- Enhanced monitoring capabilities to identify customer-impacting issues in real-time
- Improved latency by 50% in Live TV voice commands “tune to channel" voice command by optimizing Java services stack.
- Built up developer resources including significant improvements to the reference app for developers as well as writing a step-by-step integration guide.

- Acted as technical expert for Amazon in negotiations with top US content providers (e.g., Netflix, HBO, etc.) business and engineering teams to drive adoption of integrations
- Raised team technical quality bar through individual mentorship, leading by example and building mechanisms to foster healthy engineering culture
- Mentored individual engineers leading to two promotions from junior to mid-level
- Whittled down unnecessary process to boost team productivity

### Software Development Engineer II @ Amazon
Jan 2020 – Jan 2022 | Arlington, Virginia

### Senior Consultant @ CapTech Ventures, Inc
Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 | Richmond, Virginia Area

### Consultant @ CapTech Ventures, Inc
Jan 2017 – Jan 2019 | Richmond, Virginia Area
Technical Lead - Web Component Integration
Delivered technical product to enable new integration model for insurance client’s partners. Architected and built a universal web component with Angular Elements to enable B2C organizations to easily display and sell insurance in their web application alongside products.

AWS Architect / Engineer - Cloud Application Migration
Designed and implemented cloud architecture and CI/CD for client applications previously living in legacy datacenter. Delivered migration of client’s entire eCommerce application environment responsible for processing over $1bn/yr. 

Development Lead - eCommerce Alexa Skill Proof of Concept
Led team of four developers to build internal proof of concept Alexa skill to enable customers to browse and purchase products, and request information. Delivered demo of product to client CEO and board members. Enforced comprehensive code standards and reviews as well as best practice GitFlow.

Full Stack Developer - Insurance Web Application Refresh
Delivered modern, mobile-friendly eCommerce web application to replace legacy website. Designed custom CMS built on open source tools, developed NodeJS services layer on AWS Lambda, developed eCommerce Angular web application. 

Cloud Subject Matter Expert - CapTech Elevate Internship
Served as Cloud SME for CapTech interns multiple years running. Presented topics on Cloud, Serverless, REST, and enterprise software development. Provided support and guidance for interns as they delivered a technical product for their summer project.

### Student @ Virginia Tech
Jan 2013 – Jan 2017

### Intern II @ Rackspace, the #1 managed cloud company
Jan 2016 – Jan 2016 | Blackburg, VA

### Software Engineer Co-op @ Solers
Jan 2015 – Jan 2015 | Blacksburg, VA

### Computer Associate @ Virginia Tech Services, Inc.
Jan 2015 – Jan 2015 | Blacksburg, VA

### Kitchen Utility @ The Ring House
Jan 2014 – Jan 2014 | Rockville, MD

### Board of Directors Member @ Innovate Living-Learning Community
Jan 2013 – Jan 2014


## Education
### Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science
Virginia Tech
Jan 2013 – Jan 2017


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/zakklefkowits
- Website: https://zakk.io/resume

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Source: https://flows.cv/zakk
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/zakk/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-03-22