Tim Bray has left his role as vice-president and distinguished engineer at Amazon Web Services after describing the sacking of protesters as “evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture”.

He had worked for the business for five years.

Bray, a well-regarded coding engineer who is thought to have earned more than $1m (£803,000) a year, claimed in a blog post that Amazon fired the organiser of a small protest about safety conditions at a warehouse.