Amazon engineering director poached by SmartThings
Amazon's Director of Engineering, Robert Parker, has been headhunted by technology company SmartThings to supervise its future hardware and software development sections. His role as Senior Vice President of Engineering will be to apply his knowledge of user-friendly products to the smart home market that is struggling for acceptance at present. SmartThings will enable devices within the home to be connected via Cloud technology as part of the Internet of Things (IoT) philosophy. Parker aims to take this to the next level by implementing safeguards within this ecosystem that will ensure each device performs exactly as their designer intended. In addition, there will be guidelines that help the user to determine the exact cause of a problem if the device malfunctions. The emphasis is on fully operational products that work perfectly for the user.

Robert Parker, Amazon's director of engineering, has joined Samsung's SmartThings smart home team.

In Parker's new job as senior vice president of engineering, which SmartThings confirmed Monday to CNET, he is overseeing software and hardware development for connected homes. Parker stands to help the platform clean house following months of glitches that have left many users and developers disgruntled.

The news comes just days ahead of Samsung's Developers Conference, where SmartThings is expected to play a central role.

Parker worked nearly five years at Amazon. Before that, according to his LinkedIn page, Parker spent 18 years as a general manager at Microsoft.

"Having something that really works is critical," Parker told The Verge. "That's one of the things that working at Amazon, I carry to SmartThings."

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.