Oh man, I really can't resist adding to the record a bit here. The author of the article - Marc Brooker - has worked (and led!) on formal methods at AWS and DynamoDB much more than James. The paper James linked to in his post was authored by ... Marc Brooker! so this comment just reads funny to me. Even though I know it wasn't intended that way.

James isn't the architect of AWS either, the scale we're at and the way we organize ourselves mean we don't really have any single architects of anything. Also EC2, S3, SQS, and more were in place by the time James joined. But I'm not trying to talk down James, because James has been much more influential and important to AWS success than an architect! His technical and business insights, his vision and drive, and his focus on some really very key levers have been monumental drivers of AWS. I know I've learned a lot from him, and still do. He's so good at it that he's now on the Amazon leadership team, reporting directly to our CEO!

Ah well you would know much better than me! I heard someone mention James as the architect of aws and recall him mentioning designing dynamodb. Did he do that, or am I universally wrong sans his love for formal methods?

Thanks for the clarification though. This is truly why I enjoy HN so much. The ability to get corrected by the experts is an honor :)