Amazon layoffs: Who is Colleen Aubrey, the AWS executive linked to Project Dawn email leak

Amazon is set to lay off around 16,000 employees in a second major round of job cuts, as part of an internal restructuring plan known as Project Dawn.

The latest reductions follow an earlier round of layoffs in October 2025, when about 14,000 employees were let go. Details of the second round entered the public domain after an internal email referring to the planned cuts was mistakenly sent to employees who were not intended to receive it.

According to reports, the email referred to an upcoming meeting linked to the layoffs, which was later cancelled. The message originated from Colleen Aubrey, a senior executive at Amazon Web Services, although it may have been sent by her assistant. The email mentioned Project Dawn, Amazon’s internal efficiency programme aimed at reducing management layers, cutting bureaucracy and enabling teams to move faster to serve customers.

Business Insider reported that the email triggered confusion and anxiety among employees, with some questioning whether they had received the message because their roles were at risk in the next round of layoffs.

Who is Colleen Aubrey?

Colleen Aubrey has been with Amazon since 2005, beginning her career as a sales manager in London with Amazon UK. After expanding the company’s market share in the UK, she moved to Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle.

Between 2016 and 2021, Aubrey led Amazon’s advertising business across 10 countries. In 2021, she was appointed senior vice president of Advertising Products and Technology. Since May 2024, she has been serving as senior vice president at AWS Solutions.

Aubrey joined Amazon’s senior leadership group, known as the S-team, in 2019. She studied at the University of Canberra and Macquarie University and began her career in 1999 at HotJobs. She later had a brief stint at CareerOne, an Australian job search portal.

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What is Project Dawn and who will be affected?

Project Dawn is aimed at improving efficiency across Amazon by streamlining organisational structures, removing management layers and optimising workflows.

Employees expected to be affected include teams within AWS cloud services such as Bedrock, Redshift and ProServe, as well as retail units including Prime subscriptions and the Delivery Experience team. Many of the impacted roles are understood to be software engineering positions.

Amazon has not yet released a detailed, country-wise breakdown of the roles affected by the latest round of layoffs.