Amir Rao

Global Executive - General Manager/Director at Amazon Web Services | Cloud, Telco/5G, Edge/Sovereign Cloud, Gen AI infra, Agentic Transformation | Product, Sales, Partner Portfolio, and Strategic pursuits management

San Francisco Bay Area

About

Global business executive with 25 years of Go to Market, Product, Technology, and Partnership leadership experience. Specific prior responsibilities included general management, P&L management, product management, sales development, strategic technology alliances, and partner solution portfolio management. Worked across various locations in NAMER, EMEA, APAC, & LATAM regions at Tier 1 technology companies like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Nokia Networks, Motorola Networks, & Huawei Technologies. Possesses solid understanding of technology market trends and evolving technology infrastructure stack for Connectivity, Compute, Networking, AI based automation/inference, Sovereignty, and Operations. Thought leader in edge/sovereign cloud infrastructure and building technology alliances to drive strategic deals and ecosystem/enterprise adoption. Track record of delivering industry making wins by building customer centric 1P/3P products/solutions and scaling these to grow revenue. Enjoys result oriented culture & possess strong EQ. Personal Values: 1/ positivity & excellence; 2/ intellectual honesty & builder passion; and 3/ enablement & accountability To me, "Success is a byproduct of one's ambition to dream, passion to believe, effort to persevere, and integrity to prevail"​. I work to build a culture of courage, integrity and accountability thus creating trust within the business and most importantly with customers. I thrive at bringing high impact products and ideas to life. I perceive leadership as being decisive, compassionate, inspirational, authentic, and enabling. I prioritize business growth and I am always learning. AWS taught me power of innovation and bracing for long term success, Microsoft taught me significance of relentless positivity and resilience, Motorola taught me how to operate in a diverse high performance culture, and Huawei taught me the virtue of hard work and ambition.

Experience

  • Amazon Web Services (AWS) (9 yrs 9 mos)
    • Director, Global GTM & Solutions, Telco BU
      May 2025 - Present · 1 yr 2 mos

      Leading AWS global GTM & 1P/3P Solutions portfolio for $3.5Bn+/yr Telco business. Directly responsible for $2.2Bn+/yr revenue, 80+ppl global team including SDEs, Solution Architects, Tech BDs, & Strategic Sales Development managers. Responsible for 1P/3P solutions life cycle management across the value chain of customer business while owning strategic technology/revenue relationships with key GSIs/ISVs.

    • Director Product Management, Telco/5G, EC2 Edge
      Oct 2021 - Apr 2025 · 3 yrs 7 mos

      Leadership and founding team member AWS Elastic Compute (EC2) Edge team. Built/Introduced products such as AWS Local Zone, AWS Wavelength Zone (WLZ), AWS Outpost racks, & outpost servers. Helped define AWS cloud continuum value proposition using common APIs across region/edge. Partnered with AWS Network Infrastructure and field teams for rollout of Edge cloud Infrastructure including products/services at customer premises to meet the compute, networking, and GPU needs. Product evolution to second generation AWS Edge compute embracing high density GPU/Compute/Storage parity with AWS regions for Outposts and Wavelength Local Zones (WLZs), and drove parity with AWS Dedicated LZs, ML Zones. Positioned AWS Outposts racks with AWS CMR7i compute & GPUs as AWS on-premised cloud replacing private Cloud for large enterprises.

    • General Manager Solution Portfolio and Technology Alliances - Telecom BU
      Apr 2021 - Oct 2021 · 7 mos

      Product/Portfolio management and Go to Market Strategy for AWS Telco business. Built AWS Telco BU as first dedicated GTM hire in 2016 (500+ people & 3Bn+ AWS revenue by FY24). Led strategy execution to drive 4x revenue in 8 yrs (60%+ partner driven & influenced). Launched technology alliances & built solution portfolio using ISV/GSI solutions across Telcos’ value chain and the topology of the network. Continuation of the principal people manager role, while being internally promoted as an AWS executive in recognition of the contribution.

  • Director Global Business Development at Udemy
    Sep 2015 - Oct 2016 · 1 yr 2 mos

    Responsible for creating global strategic relationships to drive impactful and sustainable product extensions for world’s largest skills based online learning marketplace

  • Country General Manager Pakistan at Microsoft
    Jan 2013 - Jul 2014 · 1 yr 7 mos

    Country General Manager for the Microsoft subsidiary in Pakistan. Delivered a turnaround, where the subsidiary met its financial targets for the first time in 5 years while yielding a 22% YoY growth. Focused on team transformation, I created a culture of high accountability and shared responsibility. I aligned my teams' energy and motivation to the single goal of business growth and used it as the only measure of their individual growth of team members. KEY ACHIEVEMENTS ◆ Drove 22% YOY growth from static topline status ◆ Led organizational change resulting in significant business results improvement ◆ Led teams to deliver Microsoft Operating System and Office Suite to a record 700,000 students across country. ◆ Drove establishment of Pakistan’s first local assembly / manufacturing facility for laptops, tablets, and mobile phones as a partner to Microsoft.

  • Head of Business Development - Africa (Post Aquisition of Motorola Networks BU) at Nokia Networks
    May 2011 - Apr 2012 · 1 yr

    Joined Nokia Siemens Networks after the divestiture of Motorola's networks business unit. As part of NSN's regional leadership team, led the regional business development function focusing on the Wireless Braodband business exploring the opportunitites in the LTE space and identifying the right market place of LTE for Africa. After leaving Nokia in April 2012, I assembled and Led a team of consultants for six months between May 2012 to October 2012 as an independent management consultant to successfully secure nationwide LTE license for operation in Ghana for a family business; Delivered Market Assessment, Technical blueprint, Corporate Business Strategy, Financial planning, Launch strategy, and an organizational development plan.

  • Director Strategic Sales Development Africa & Pakistan at Motorola
    Dec 2004 - Apr 2011 · 6 yrs 5 mos

    o Dec 2009 - April 2011 - Responsible for Business Development across Africa and Pakistan reporting directly to VP & GM for Motorola Networks business in EMEA. o Nov 2008 - April 2011 - Held Additional concurrent corporate responsibility of Country General Manager for Pakistan. o Jul 2007 - Dec 2009 - Key Account Director Regional Account across Bangladesh, Uganda, Ivory Coast, Pakistan, and Congo. o Dec 2004 - Jun 2007 - Led Motorola Wireless Broadband strategic sales initiatives in ME region KEY ACHIEVEMENTS ◆ Created new sales opportunities in Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana worth $150Mn in 2010 ◆ Programmed business units (Networks, Public Safety, Mobile Devices and Connected Home) for smooth operations of annual business in excess of $100M as country manager Pakistan ◆Delivered a $80M annual P&L with Warid International, a key strategic account, across group telecom businesses in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Congo & Uganda ◆Won the first industry wide (globally) commercial WIMAX business with Wateen Telecom in 2005 and successfully delivered $300Mn business over a 4 year period; ◆Won the first CDMA business in MEA region in 2005; Supported WIMAX wins in Menatel – Bahrain in 2006 & Atheeb - Saudi Arabia in 2007 ◆Won 6 EMEA OUTSTANDING achievement awards in 4 consecutive years between 2006-2009