Former Amazon Devices VP joins Wyze as president and COO of smart-home hardware startup

Melissa Kirmayer Eamer, who spent nearly 20 years at Amazon, including as vice president of the company’s Devices division, is the new president and chief operation officer at Wyze, the Seattle-area maker of smart-home security cameras and more.

Kirmayer Eamer adds to the Amazon pedigree at Kirkland, Wash.-based Wyze, which was co-founded in 2017 by three veterans of the tech giant — CEO Yun Zhang, CMO Dave Crosby, and CPO Dongsheng Song.

After leaving Amazon in 2019, Kirmayer Eamer spent a year as COO at beauty supply company Glossier before founding wellness/longevity clinic Modern Age, which was acquired in 2024.

“Amazon is a massive company, and in the 20 years that I was there I really started to miss that startupy feel of chaos and sort of building from scratch,” she told GeekWire.

She called Wyze a “perfect combination” of what she was looking for.

“The co-founders have the Amazon DNA of starting with a customer and working backwards,” Kirmayer Eamer said. “And they have this business that’s really built on the combination of hardware and magical software and making people’s lives better.”

Wyze originally started with security cameras but expanded to various other smart-home devices, now offering more than 70 different products, from light bulbs to vacuums to scales. The company raised $110 million in 2021 and ranks No. 18 on the GeekWire 200 list of top Pacific Northwest startups.

Kirmayer Eamer, who oversaw product development and sales for Amazon’s Kindle and Echo, said her goal is to lean on her experience from Amazon and help Wyze get to the next level and scale the business.

“When I think of the future of really being able to monitor what’s going on with your safety, with your security, with your well-being, there’s so much more surface area for us to cover,” she said. “I’m really excited to help bring accessible devices into all of those segments.”

Kirmayer Eamer’s appointment follows a series of new product innovations from Wyze, including AI-powered video search capability and a “NBD” Notifications Filter which uses AI-enabled descriptive alerts to identify events that are “no big deal,” only sending notifications for events worthy of attention.

Earlier this month Wyze released the Bulb Cam, which combines a lightbulb with a security camera to turn any light fixture into a motion-activated surveillance object.

For its part, Amazon offers a variety of its own competing smart-home security devices from its subsidiaries, Ring, which it acquired in 2018, and Blink, which it acquired in 2017.