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I'll keep it short and sweet today: We have an open position for a senior UI designer. The design team at AmazonFresh is really a one-person shop, which means there is both tremendous opportunity and responsibility.

Here is the short version of the job description:
The AmazonFresh team is seeking innovative, self-motivated senior user experience designer to lead new design initiatives on AmazonFresh. As the sole designer, this position has a significant impact on the AmazonFresh business and on the feature set we offer our customers. This designer will work collaboratively with engineers, product managers and executives, providing both thought leadership and clean, considered solutions for the AmazonFresh business. The ideal candidate will be familiar with agile development methodologies, and thrive on rapid design and development cycles.

Read the full description and qualifications or apply online.

You may recall that in February we started running an experiment to pack pantry products directly into totes without bags. We got a lot of feedback, which was great. The responses shook out like this:

• 68% liked fewer bags


• 24% preferred having bags


• 8% wanted something else, like canvas or compostable bags

As of this afternoon, we're giving you a choice: when you check out an order with Pre-Dawn Delivery or Doorstep Delivery (where you don't have to be home), you can choose to either have "light" or "standard" bagging for your pantry items. On the order preview page, the option is right below Delivery Instructions and it looks like this:



Rest assured that we are continuing to look at ways to reduce packaging, including options like canvas bags. Thank you for all of your feedback and thank you for your patience with our experiment.

The results are in! Customers in four ZIP codes were vying to be the next AmazonFresh neighborhood, and Laurelhurst (98105) won with 42% of the vote. AmazonFresh will start delivering in the 98105 as of Tuesday, 24 March. Customers in this neighborhood will have the Big Radish program.

Welcome to the AmazonFresh family, 98105. We look forward to serving you.

A couple weeks ago I wrote a post about different service options for different neighborhoods. One of the service options I described was the Big Radish program. Well, starting Monday, 23 March, we'll be rolling the program out to a few more neighborhoods, specifically Capitol Hill (98101, 98102, 98122) and Fremont/Greenlake/Wallingford (98103). (It has been in place in 98107, 98117 and 98199 for a few weeks already.)

In the wake of the announcement there's been a little confusion about what the Big Radish program is, so I wanted to explain in more detail. It's not complicated. Here's how it works:

1. If you do not have Big Radish status: orders $30-$74.99 have a $5 delivery fee and orders over $75 are delivered free. The reason for this is pretty simple: we lose money on small orders, and the $5 fee helps defray some of the cost. It doesn't completely close the gap, but it helps.
   
   
2. If you have Big Radish status, orders over $30 have free delivery. To get Big Radish status, you spend ~$100 each week (total of $400/month) and you have free delivery on orders over $30 for the next calendar month. There's an indicator in the upper right corner of the Web site that tells you whether you have status and how much you have to spend in a given month to get Big Radish status the next month. Here's mine:
   
   
   

Think of it like frequent flier status, except with groceries.

Yep, it's true. We need people. Smart, passionate, experienced people. If you or someone you know has the right background and is looking for a job at a great company on a fun, fast-moving team, please submit your resume! You can apply in two ways: (1) directly through the Amazon.com Jobs site. You'll want the job number included in parentheses with each job description below. Or (2) by sending an e-mail to fresh-jobs@amazon.com. If you choose to send an e-mail, please include the job number and the answer to this question: If you were a vegetable, which one would you be and why?

Our key positions right now are:

• Mid-to-Senior Level Software Engineer (035366) As an SDE on our team, you'll get the chance to boost our consumer Web site and the back end that enables the AmazonFresh experience. We're looking for strong technical leaders with a passion for delivering high-quality software. AmazonFresh uses open source tools like Struts, Rails, and mySQL; an agile software development methodology; and lots of technical creativity. Are you willing to code for food, coffee, chocolates and the occasional home-made baked-good bribe? Seriously though, join us and you'll enjoy a fun, start-up environment coupled with Amazon's consistent success.
  
  
• Technical Program Manager (035889). Put your program management prowess and intellectual curiosity to good use. As a TPM with AmazonFresh you will work cross-functionally with designers, software development engineers, product managers, buyers, and operators to manage bottlenecks, balance business needs with technical constraints, and build a great all-around customer experience. (And, you can enjoy chocolates and coffee right along with the developers!)
  
  
  
• Delivery Driver, Bellevue, WA (035459) Meet AmazonFresh customers face-to-face while making grocery deliveries in and around Seattle. Qualified candidates are 21 years of age or older; possess a valid driver's license and a good driving record; have a positive and upbeat attitude, even in heavy traffic and unusual driving conditions; have excellent communication and customer service skills; are clever problem-solvers; and have /3+ years of delivery truck driving experience.
  

Please help us keep building great features and expanding to new areas by referring people you know who would be great for these jobs!

In one recent post I wrote about Experiment Day, my favorite day of the month at AmazonFresh. Sometimes our developers will choose to work on features that are oft-requested or that they themselves wish we had. A month or two ago, a couple of the developers got together with our buyers and cooked up a way to show price per unit of measure–price per ounce, price per pound, etc.–and made it easy for you to sort your search and browse results. Like this:



Try it out. Tell us what you think. (And tell us if you find something funky; we're constantly on the lookout for bad data!)

Most of you probably know that AmazonFresh is a pilot program. We are only open in the greater Seattle area and not even in all neighborhoods. (Through 18 March we're taking votes on which ZIP code to open next: 98105, 98053, 98034, or 98056.) We're starting small and, as I've mentioned in a few posts, we experiment a lot with our service with the aim to get it right.

One of the areas we experiment with is what we call "service parameters," meaning how much you have to spend to get free delivery, whether there is an Amazon Prime benefit, etc. The reason we are experimenting with these terms is that we're trying to find the best formula for our business. Our plan is to make a decision soon, and then convert all ZIP codes to use that set of options. Here's a quick rundown of the current options:

1. We recently opened two neighborhoods for delivery: Magnolia (98199) and Ballard (98107, 98117). In these areas, we've introduced a two-part approach. Part one: Orders $30-$74.99 carry a $5 delivery fee and orders over $75 have free delivery. Part two: Big Radish status. No, this isn't some new designation for people who eat a lot of vegetables. It's more like the frequent-flyer status you get on airlines except that in this case, it's about groceries. To get Big Radish status, you spend $400 in a given month and then deliveries are free for orders over $30 during the following calendar month. It sounds a little bit confusing, but to make it easy to know whether you qualify for the benefit we tell you. If you live in one of those neighborhoods, look in the upper right corner of the site and you'll see something like this:
   
   
   
   
2. In ZIP codes 98027*, 98029*, 98052, 98074, 98075, 98103, and 98115, deliveries between $30 and $74.99 have a $5 fee. Amazon Prime members get free delivery on orders over $30.
   
   
3. In ZIP codes 98004, 98005*, 98006*, 98007, 98008, 98033, 98039, 98040, 98102, 98106, 98109, 98112*, 98116, 98118*, 98119, 98122*, 98126, 98136, 98144*, deliveries over $30 are free.
   

* ZIP codes where we have limited coverage. In other words, we don’t deliver to the full ZIP code. You have to check your address to be sure.

As always, we love to hear what you think about our service. So please write a comment or send us an e-mail with your thoughts and ideas.

I love AmazonFresh. It's a sentiment we hear often from our customers, but I'm saying it as an employee: I love AmazonFresh. One of the many reasons for my ardor is Experiment Day. Each month our developers dedicate one day to working on ideas that they're personally excited about. The goal is to build something that can be completed and deployed in a single day. This blog is actually the result of an experiment day collaboration.

Last week was one such Experiment Day for AmazonFresh, and our developers cooked up some good stuff: customer comments on the blog, an RSS feed, and my new favorite feature: Quick View. With Quick View you can see a product's ingredients and nutrition facts without having to click all the way through to a details page. From search and browse, hover over a product image with your mouse and you will see a Quick View button, like this:




Click the button and--as if by magic--you'll see a popover with that item's ingredients and nutrition data. Like this on for Fage Yogurt:



Ain't it great?! Another of our developers solved the confusion suffered by some of not knowing whether an item has been added to your cart when you have scrolled down too far to see the cart. Now when you add an item to the cart, the item is highlighted in the cart and the item itself has an indicator that looks like this:



These are seemingly small things, but in my (not-so-humble) opinion, they add up to a better shopping experience. Tell us what you think, or let us know if you have other suggestions. We're always working on new things.

A few weeks ago on NPR's The Splendid Table, Lynne Rossetto Kasper sardonically wished "good luck" to a caller who mentioned wanting to pursue a diet entirely free of High-Fructose Corn Syrup. I wondered, is it really that pervasive? So I methodically checked the ingredient labels on all of the products in my pantry. There were definitely some surprises in there. (Happily, Theo Chocolates were not among the offenders.)

For those of you who, like that NPR caller, want to weed the stuff out of your diet, one of our developers ginned up a High-Fructose Corn Syrup Free filter. You can select it to see all products that are free of HFCS, or you can search or browse and then filter your results set to show only items that do not contain HFCS. Look for the filter under the Show Only box:



Check back later this week for more service updates. And let us know if you have ideas for features or filters that would make your shopping more efficient.

Today AmazonFresh started making deliveries to the Magnolia neighborhood, ZIP code 98199. We don't know which area we will open next, but customer requests are one of the most important criteria in making that decision. So let us know if you are interested in getting service to your neighborhood.