Amazon's 95 Washington Layoffs Can Still Transfer. Pitch Directors First

Amazon's WARN notice, made public on Nov 3, 2026, lists about 95 Washington jobs. It covers software engineers, product managers, scientists and directors, plus 15 remote workers. One line in it decides who you can actually hire: anyone who lands another Amazon job before their separation date won't be laid off. If you want to hire laid-off Amazon engineers from this list, your first competitor isn't other recruiters. It's Amazon's own internal job board.

What does Amazon's Washington WARN notice actually say?

The notice covers about 95 Washington jobs from Amazon's previously announced retail (Stores) cuts. Separations start Dec 7 and run through Jan 25. It's the paperwork for the October round, not a new layoff.

Amazon sent the notice to the Washington Employment Security Department. Here's what's in it:

• About 95 Washington roles
• 15 remote workers who live in Washington and may never have regularly visited an Amazon office
• Titles that include software engineers, product managers, scientists, researchers, a vice president of product management, a director of supply chain management and a director of software development
• Separations from Dec 7 through Jan 25, with Amazon saying every affected employee got at least 90 days' notice
• A transfer clause: employees who land other jobs inside Amazon before their separation dates won't be laid off

Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser framed it as restructuring: "We've adjusted parts of our Stores business because we believe this structure will better enable us to deliver on our priorities." Reuters reported the parent round as fewer than 1,000 white-collar jobs, mostly in Stores.

The reports don't agree on when people were told. KGW says leadership began notifying staff in July. Coverage citing GeekWire says most were notified in October. In practice, some people on this list may have been job hunting for months and others for a few weeks, so ask each candidate rather than guessing.

This is also the latest in a series of small Washington filings, not a one-off:

Why is Amazon's internal job board your real competitor?

Everyone on the notice keeps their job if they win an internal role before separation, and in its last round Amazon said its recruiters would prioritize internal candidates. Until each person's separation date, outside recruiters are second in line.

There's precedent. In the 2025 cuts, Beth Galetti, Amazon's SVP of People Experience and Technology, wrote memos giving most affected employees 90 days to look for a new role internally. She added that "our recruiting teams will prioritize internal candidates." This notice carries the same transfer clause.

A transfer is the easy move for both sides. The hiring manager already knows the person's track record, and the employee keeps their tenure and avoids a job search in December. When a candidate says yes to you, they're giving that up, so your pitch has to be worth more than staying.

The internal board picks first, so the market gets what's left

Mid-level software development engineers with portable skills are the easiest people for Amazon to place internally, because almost every org needs them. So assume the IC engineers still available near Dec 7 are partly what's left after Amazon's own filter. That isn't a judgment on their quality. Some got matched to the wrong team. Some wanted out of Amazon anyway. The point is that the best moment to reach the strongest ICs is before they accept a transfer, not after.

Until each separation date, you aren't competing with other recruiters. You're competing with Amazon's own hiring managers.

How crowded is the Seattle hiring market right now?

Amazon's notice alone barely registers: about 95 people out of Amazon's 50,000 or so corporate workers in the Seattle region. The competition comes from other local employers cutting at the same time.

0.19%

Here's what else hit the Seattle area around the same time:

• Expeditors cut 230 tech jobs in the Seattle region
• Alaska Airlines cut 200 people, 125 of them in Washington
• Amazon Devices and Services cut another 250 positions on Oct 28, separate from this Stores notice
• Amazon Stores cut fewer than 1,000 white-collar jobs overall, according to Reuters, and this notice covers its Washington share

So the region has plenty of candidates overall but very few of the specific profiles on this list. The notice lists a director of software development from Amazon's retail business. If you send a generic "Seattle software engineer" message, you're competing with every open role in the city. If you message that director about a specific seat, you mostly aren't.

Who on the notice is most likely to reach the open market?

Directors and VPs are the most likely to end up available, followed by the 15 remote workers. Mid-level SDEs are the most likely to be absorbed internally.

The reason is in what Amazon says this restructuring is for: "reducing layers, increasing ownership and removing bureaucracy." When a company removes management layers, it also removes the open director and VP seats a displaced leader could move into. An internal board can place a strong SDE quickly. It can rarely produce a VP of product management role during a de-layering. That makes the VP of product management, the director of software development and the director of supply chain management on this notice your most reachable candidates, not your hardest.

The 15 remote workers are the group most recruiters will miss. Amazon has required five days a week in the office since January 2025, and that creates a problem for anyone who has never regularly gone in. A hiring manager whose team badges in every day has to decide whether to take on a transfer who would need to start commuting for the first time. That's a mechanism, not a reported finding. But it points the same way: these people are more likely to reach the market, and remote or hybrid flexibility is something you can offer that Amazon's internal board can't.

Ranked by how likely they are to be reachable by an outside recruiter:

1. VPs and directors. Few internal seats exist at their level during a de-layering.
2. The 15 Washington remote workers. Transferring internally means accepting a five-day office schedule.
3. Scientists and researchers tied to Stores-specific problems. Their domain may not exist in the orgs that are hiring.
4. Mid-level SDEs and PMs. The internal board is built to place them, so reach them early or expect them gone.

How do you find them? Search Amazon's titles, not the company

The coverage lists titles, not people, so you find them by matching on Amazon's in-house job titles. In Refolk's index, 15,428 US profiles hold the exact title "Software Development Engineer," and 68% of a 25-profile sample work at Amazon or AWS.

Software Development Engineer (SDE) is Amazon's internal name for a software engineer. Senior Product Manager - Technical (PMT) is its name for a technical product manager. Both are rare enough outside Amazon to work as a fingerprint.

Source: Refolk's index. Shares come from a 25-profile sample, so treat them as directional.

88%

The PMT title is close to a perfect filter. Search the exact title in quotes, limit it to Seattle, Bellevue and Redmond, and most of what comes back are the people you want.

The SDE title is broader. About a third of US SDE-titled profiles in the sample are outside Amazon, which suggests many ex-Amazonians keep the title after they leave. That cuts both ways. The same search finds current staff on this notice and alumni who can refer you to them, but the title alone isn't enough. US SDE profiles outnumber Senior PMT profiles about 41 to 1, and the US has 1.7x as many as India, so an unfiltered SDE search will bury the 95 people you're after. Add location, Stores or retail keywords, and tenure.

Stacking several conditions like that is miserable in a boolean string and easy to describe in a sentence. That's the gap Refolk closes: you describe the person in plain English and get back a ranked shortlist.

Once you have names, check them before you reach out. Public work for the engineers, and talks or published writing for the directors, tell you more about scope than a title does. Blind (teamblind.com) is also worth reading. Amazon employees break down WARN notices and transfer timing there in real time, which is the closest thing you'll get to a live view of how the internal board is moving.

When should you pitch: before or after Dec 7?

Pitch now, before candidates commit to a transfer, and plan a second round of outreach for late December and January. Offers made in the first two weeks of December compete directly with internal transfers. Offers made later compete for the people the internal process didn't place.

The calendar works against you. Separations run from Dec 7 to Jan 25, which covers the holidays, when many outside hiring processes slow down. Amazon's internal process keeps running until each person's separation date. A candidate who hears from you in mid-November can weigh you against the internal board. A candidate who hears from you on Dec 22 may already have signed a transfer.

This is where most outside teams lose these candidates. The external process usually needs a recruiter screen, a hiring manager call, an onsite and a comp approval, and many of the people involved are out over the holidays. You find the right Amazon director in November, and by the time your offer clears in January they've taken a transfer or someone else's offer. The sourcing worked. The process was too slow to finish in time.

A workable timeline:

1. Now through Nov 30: First contact. Name the transfer clause so they know you understand their position, ask when they were notified (July or October changes how far along their search is), and offer what the internal board can't: a seat at their level for directors and VPs, flexibility for the remote 15.
2. Dec 1 to Dec 14: Get to a decision. Compress your loop so an offer can land before their separation date, not after. A process that ends after Jan 25 isn't an option for them.
3. From Dec 7: Separations begin. Follow up with everyone you talked to, because a pending transfer may have fallen through.
4. Through Jan 25: Last separations. Re-run your search, since profiles updated in January can reveal who didn't place internally.

That re-run is easy to skip. Running the same plain-English query in Refolk again in early January takes a minute, and it catches the people who start updating their profiles once the internal window closes.

FAQ

When do the Amazon layoffs in Washington take effect?

According to the WARN notice Amazon filed in Washington, separations begin Dec 7 and continue through Jan 25. Amazon says every affected employee got at least 90 days' notice. Reports differ on when that notice was given (KGW says notifications began in July, while coverage citing GeekWire says most people were told in October), so individual timelines vary.

Can laid-off Amazon employees still transfer internally?

Yes. The notice says employees who land another job inside Amazon before their separation date won't be laid off. In the 2025 cuts, Amazon gave most affected employees 90 days to search internally and said its recruiters would prioritize internal candidates. Mid-level engineers are the most likely to be placed that way.

Are these Amazon layoffs in November 2026 a new round?

No. An Amazon spokesperson said the notice is part of the previously reported retail layoffs, which Reuters put at fewer than 1,000 white-collar jobs, mostly in Stores. The 250 Devices and Services cuts on Oct 28 are a separate action.