Audible Sound Bites with Ernesto Leos Gonzalez

Ernesto Leos González is a Support Engineer Director working from our Mexico City support hub, where he leads a team helping to ensure Audible’s service runs seamlessly for listeners worldwide. He leverages more than 10 years of IT expertise, plus cutting-edge Amazon technologies, to deliver the utmost security for our customers. Here he shares what he loves about his work, what life is like at the Mexico City hub, and the lessons from yoga that he applies to his daily life.

Can you share a bit about your career journey with Audible?

I came to support Audible in May 2023, after spending almost 10 years at a multinational IT company. I felt I needed to step out of my comfort zone and accept a new challenge. When I started, I was creating, onboarding and managing one scrum team. Later, my scope increased to managing three teams. Then in May 2024, just one year after I joined, I had the incredible opportunity to continue supporting Audible as the Mexico City Hub Lead.

How does your job contribute to Audible’s mission to surprise and delight listeners around the world?

Although I am based in Mexico, my entire team has a global reach! We support Audible services and customers around the world, including Asia-Pacific, Europe, and North America, by using the latest tech innovations from Amazon. We also work to ensure our services are ready to handle a large number of customers and requests during peak seasons and special events, such as Prime Day.

My team is my biggest inspiration—they make me want to be an exemplary person and better professional.

What’s life like at the Mexico City hub?

Our hub just opened last year, in the Amazon offices. It has been a thrilling experience to start from zero, then watch the team grow and our space fill up. The Mexico team is highly collaborative, with tremendous potential and talent, and a strong desire to learn—which is a phenomenal recipe for success.

Although our hub is relatively new, we are already positively impacting the Mexico City community. We’ve worked with a food bank to unpack and sort donated items, and then package them for delivery to people in need. Our team members have also talked about STEM careers with secondary school students, including sharing about our own journeys to becoming engineers.   

What do you love about participating in those community impact activities?

When we worked with the food bank, there were two things that I cherished: first, seeing Audible's support team so engaged and energetic—there was so much passion in the room that it was contagious; and second, Audible's CTO, Tim Martin, was there with us. I stopped for a while to take some photographs of the event, and I noticed he was so focused on the task. At that very moment, I knew this was the place for me.

What was your first Audible listen?

Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy. This novel has everything: socialites, love, betrayal, death. Even better, Maggie Gyllenhaal narrates it.

Have you received any customer feedback you love?

Whenever I wear an Audible-branded T-shirt or hoodie out in public, I always get people asking me if my work supports Audible and letting me know they love Audible’s product!

How do you exemplify our People Principles in your day-to-day work?

Caring for people, their well-being and growth, is my top priority, so our principle of “Activate Caring” inspires me to be more empathetic and understanding with my teammates. I have an operational mindset, so I also encourage my team to “Articulate the Possible and Move Fast to Make It Real” whenever I can! 

Have you ever had a leader at Audible empower you to take on a challenge or explore a new area?

When I joined the Audible support team, everything was new for me: new office, country, team, and scope. Never in my career have I had so much freedom. It was challenging, but also intimidating; for the first time I had no one telling me exactly what I had to do. It was a tremendous challenge for me to create the scope of my role and my team, and determine how to measure success. I loved it!

How do you draw inspiration from culture and technology?

Recently, I started to practice hatha yoga, and I take certain teachings from the mat to my work desk: Don't judge too harshly (myself or others), as everyone is at a different place on their own journey and deserves to be understood; have patience, as there is no shortcut to get where you want to go, and overstraining, overextending, and overworking will only result in physical or mental injury; and finally, take a breath—it is okay to pause, enjoy the moment, reconnect, and become stronger and more able to deal with whatever challenge I am facing.

Lightning round

Favorite genre? Science-fiction for the win!

Listening from a speaker or headphones? Headphones.

Favorite activity while listening? Jogging.

Morning person or night owl? Night owl, all the way.

Favorite snack? Homemade buttered popcorn.

What are you currently listening to?

The Audible Original adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984—it’s an amazing, immersive experience to listen with headphones. I felt the Thought Police breathing down on my neck and coming for me!