Q&A with Viraj Chatterjee, Director of Geospatial and GM for Amazon Lockers & Amazon Hub

Everyone, meet Viraj. Viraj joined Amazon over 5 years ago and is the Director of our Geospatial team and GM for Amazon Lockers & Amazon Hub. Thanks for sharing your experiences and Amazon story with us, Viraj!

What is your favorite Amazon memory?

In 2019 I was on a work trip in Spain and had the opportunity to visit a fully automated fulfillment center. It was like being a kid in a candy store. I was fascinated by the enormity and scale of the operations, and especially the automated packaging that’s customized to the product being shipped to the customer. The precision of the robots in doing stow and pick operations gave me a close insight on how Amazon is using robotics in getting a package to our customers in the fastest and accurate way. Those three hours I spent at that facility were an absolute joy and remains my favorite memory. 

What accomplishment at Amazon are you most proud of?

I’m incredibly proud of the convenience we bring to our customers and the impact we have on communities across the world. My team plays a critical role where Amazon customers across the world depend on receiving their items where and when they want. The pandemic that engulfed all of us these past 3 years was a moment of reckoning for all of us. I was so proud to see our teams at Amazon responding with speed and innovation, and ensuring every customer across the world was served from household essentials to medical supplies or even helping local government. We worked closely with our Disaster Recovery teams whenever the world is faced with any calamity. 

What is something you have done that you would consider innovative or pioneering at Amazon so far?

All I can share is that Geospatial is an incredibly complex domain, that requires Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Understanding Big Data, Camera Engineering, the works. I am fortunate that I work for a talented team who are super focused on solving problems for our customers. The team does publish and present their work at conferences across the world. If one is interested, you can search for Geospatial topics at the SIGPATIAL and IEEE websites and you’ll find several publications from my team at Amazon.

What brings you passion/excitement to your role and team?

The fact that our technology and solutions touch the lives of millions of people across the globe every single day, is extremely humbling and adds to all the excitement to my role as well. So, when a package gets delivered to your doorsteps, or you use your Amazon shopping app or seamlessly open an Amazon Locker and pickup your packages. I get to thank each of my hard-working team members for making that happen like clockwork! Of course, we get it wrong as well at times and those are moments for us to learn, introspect and get better for the next day for our customers. The Amazon scale is enormous, and every country our Geospatial team operates in, brings in additional complexity beyond the scale and yet the smart people that I lead, find innovative solutions to each problem. 

What do you do for fun/work life balance?

As a leader of a global organization spread across 15 countries in the world, it’s difficult and at times impossible to maintain a classic 8 AM to 5 PM routine. But despite those constraints, I do try and have some quality family time every day. We love watching crime shows and cooking shows (odd combination but that’s how it is!) as a family and a couple of episodes of any show is a must do every day. We recently finished watching all episodes of MasterChef India, and it triggered a lot of buying products from Amazon to recreate some of the techniques! Made a honeycomb tuile which thankfully turned out well on our first attempt.

What is your favorite leadership principle and why?

I do have multiple favorites like Think Big, Dive Deep, Earn Trust, Bias for Action, If I had to make the difficult choice to choose one, I will choose Earn Trust. I always tell my team to prefer great team players over brilliant jerks. We are all humans, and we deal with humans through the day. In large organizations like Amazon you can’t accomplish anything if work as an individual and not collaborate. As a leader collaboration, compassion and empathy are key fundamentals to making progress.

Best place you have ever traveled?

My family and I love tropical islands and beach holidays. We’ve been fortunate to visit several islands around the world like Hawaii, Seychelles, Mauritius, Maldives, Langkawi, Bali, Krabi, Goa, Kerala just to name a few. My favorite is island I visited is Bali. We loved the rich tradition and culture of that place - which was a mix of Hinduism and Buddhism. Some unforgettable moments from that trip were the Kecak Fire Dance at the Uluwatu Temple, which is at a clifftop with breathtaking views of the Indian Ocean; and trekking Mount Batur starting at 3:30 AM for soaking in the sunrise and frying marshmallows from the hot steams of the active volcano there breathtaking! Living in Seattle, you can understand my craving for the Sun!