How to deal with more responsibility in the team and grow as a leader?

To start off: You are in a great position. Most engineers at Amazon would love to be in your shoes!

Going from SDE 1 -> SDE 2 in 1 year is already quite impressive, so congrats! Even at Meta, that's a good pace and Meta is known for way faster promotion speeds than Amazon.

On top of that, it seems like you have more scope than you know how to handle. This is way, way better than the opposite problem of not having enough scope (this is the case for most FAANG engineers).

Anyways, my main advice here is to scale yourself. There was actually another Amazon SDE 2 that was in a very similar position to you, and I gave them the same advice to great success. I recommend going through this thread they started: "How can I teach and onboard other engineers faster?"

Drinking from a firehose is scary, but it's the fastest way to grow. Embrace it, take things in 1 gulp at a time, and you'll do just fine 😊

I'm assuming you've been asked to step up to lead a small team. Let me know if this is not the case and I'll reframe my answer! I do think some of these thoughts also apply to tech leadership in general.

The overwhelming feeling you feel means that you're in a great spot for growth. Just make sure that overwhelming feeling doesn't actually overwhelm you. Keep your basics in check (sleep, eating, exercise) and learn to prioritize the big problems first (I would limit them to three) and leave the small problems for later. Some thoughts on how you can really take advantage of this opportunity:

• Find a mentor and, if you can, a sponsor. You'll need someone that's done this before on your side when you need the support, ideally someone that also has an existing network in your realm that they can help you tap into. Reach out to someone in your org that you respect. Make sure to also have someone that is outside of your org's walls so you can get third party support that is unbiased by your org's specific goals. If you can't find someone internally, I would suggest paying for it. It can be expensive, but I personally consider this type of investment worthwhile. Having mentors and sponsors makes a big difference when it comes to growth.
• Take complete ownership and develop your own opinion. Treat this like your problem and think about how you want to shape the entire project. Talk to peers and leadership to get a feel for what is important to them but also form a personal opinion on the matter.
• Delegate tasks so you can dive deep technically. If you don't have your technical ducks in a row, the team your leading will suffer so this is one of the more important things you can do. It is actually totally okay if you need to spin this up now - good leaders are able to tackle new spaces without prior knowledge but can spin up on topics quickly. It sounds like this might be your first time doing this but if you invest consistently in this, you'd be surprised at how fast you can come up to speed.
• It's okay to say "I don't know". But always follow up soon after with a newly formed understanding of the problem and some opinions.
• Find the key players for each part of the system own. Big problems rely on a collaborative group of individuals. Identifying these key people for yours will be important, whether it be for their knowledge, execution, leadership, or support.
• Understand your team better by understanding their motivations. My answer here talks about how this is important since it'll help you make the most of your team.

To wrap it up, one person I've enjoyed learning about the topic of leadership and management is Shreyas Doshi. He's an experienced product manager, but he talks a lot about leadership and I've gleaned quite a few practical things from his content. Here's a video about delegation that I felt clarified for me how to delegate effectively.