How do I call Start-Job which depends on a function in the same powershell module as the function calling Start-Job?

move you module awsutils.psm1 in the canonical path for powershell modules:

$env:userprofile\documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\awsutils"

then initialize start-job like this

-InitializationScript { Import-Module awsutils }

Tested with my custom modules and start-job works.

try also, if you don't want move your psm1 this:

-InizializationScript { import-module -name c:\yourpath\yourmodulefolder\ }

where yourmoduleforder contain only one psm1 file.

Background jobs are autonomous things. They aren't a separate thread sharing resources, they are actually run in a whole new PowerShell.exe process. So I think you will need to use Import-Module inside your script block to have you module members available there.

What I ended up doing was setting $env:WhereAmI = Get-Location before the call to Start-Job, and then changing to -InitializationScript { Import-Module "$env:WhereAmI\awsutils.psm1 }. After the Start-Job call, I called Remove-Item env:\WhereAmI to clean-up.

(I wanted a solution that didn't require me to be developing the module within the $PSModulePath, because then source-control is a little more painful to set up.)

Thanks for the responses.