How Shailesh Vyas Engineered His Own Unique Career at Audible

When Shailesh Vyas joined Audible in 2011, he was a software development engineer. Now he holds the senior-most engineering role at Audible—senior principal engineer—and has touched virtually every surface of the Audible experience, including web, apps, Amazon Alexa, back-end services, and more. Actually, he was here even earlier, from 2006–2008, handling our pre-Amazon tech stack. Throughout his tenure, Shailesh has led many key large-scale initiatives, including Audible’s migration to Amazon technology. (“We were the first subsidiary to successfully do anything like that,” he says). So, it’s fair to say that Audible and Vyas have grown up together for nearly two decades, through countless evolutions of our services.

Throughout his journey, Vyas has collaborated with many different teams across the business, which has gifted him with a holistic understanding of our tech operations. As such, he’s in a perfect position to mentor other engineers as they grow their careers at Audible.

Vyas shares what he’s learned about inspiring and leading others, and why he thinks Audible is a “dream place” for engineers to work.

How would you describe your leadership style?

My approach to leadership can be summarized in four key points:

• Authenticity: I admire authentic leaders—being authentic helps build trust and connection with peers and teams.
• Empathy: We live and work in a diverse environment, and having empathy for different perspectives allows us to cultivate the best in our teams.
• Drive: I believe driven leaders can energize and motivate a team while nurturing the culture of deep ownership and bias for action.
• Innovation: Continuously innovating to solve complex customer problems is one of the reasons I opted for engineering and why I am still deeply passionate about it.

What is something you’ve accomplished while being a leader at Audible that you are particularly proud of?

I started in a junior engineering role at Audible. Over the years I have worked across different parts of the Audible product, which has deepened my understanding of cross-system problems and enabled me to connect well with various teams. I am particularly proud of the trust and relationships I have developed with my co-workers over this period of time.

What’s the most exciting thing about leading at Audible right now?

Audible is a pioneer in audio storytelling. We’re in a unique position where we’ve maintained our startup culture while still being part of one of the largest tech organizations. We’ve cultivated a unique People Principle around “Activate Caring” that goes way beyond words. Our product positively impacts millions of customers across the globe. You feel such gratification when you see your effort directly in the hands (and ears) of listeners around you.

Audible has hired and cultivated a world-class talent pool, so I often find myself learning from my teammates. Our systems operate on a highly scalable tech infrastructure, where we often collaborate with the larger Amazon organization; we are in an early stage in terms of the possibilities unfolding in tech, where a series of complex and challenging problems needs to be solved. It's a dream place to work for any engineer out there!

If you could travel back in time, where would you land?

I genuinely believe I was born in the best era so far. Every new day there are a series of tech innovations happening around us. If at all, I would love to travel to the future, beyond my lifetime, to see what’s next.

If we made an Audible Original about your life, what would the title be?

Passion, Persistence, and Patience.

Lightning Round

• Coffee or tea? Evening tea.
• Morning person or night owl? Mostly a morning person. I occasionally enjoy the evening get-together or game night.
• Where are you working from currently? In our hybrid way of working, I spend two days in the Newark hub and three days working from home.
• How long have you been with Audible? About 12 awesome years.
• Who is your biggest inspiration, career-wise? I am inspired by Audible’s vision to truly implement an “Activate Caring” culture and the impact it has had on the larger community. Also, a few other leaders of our time who inspire all the geeks to Dream Big.
• Dine in or take out? Dine-in, any day. I love to try new cuisines and have quality time with friends and family.
• Favorite hobby outside of work? I enjoy spending time with my kids, friends and family. I also mentor youth and up-and-coming engineers through local non-profits, social activities, teaching weekend classes and building tech toys.
• Current Audible listen? I’m currently listening to Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark and waiting for the next episode of the Audible Original, Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast.