Applied Scientist, AGI/AI Security

Amazon Science; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 143,000 - 193,000; Full time

Job summary

Amazon Security is seeking an Applied Scientist to advance security validation and monitoring techniques for AI systems at scale. You will own multiple work streams, including real-time agent monitoring, protection and automated remediation, validation of AI capabilities, and comprehensive AI asset discovery across the company.

Responsibilities include framing new research challenges, contributing to the scientific agenda, publishing results in peer-reviewed venues when appropriate, and

Qualifications

• 3+ years building models for business applications.
• PhD or Master's degree with 4+ years in CS/CE/ML.
• Experience in patents or publications at top-tier venues.
• Proficiency in Java, C++, Python or related language.
• Experience with algorithms, data structures, parsing, optimization, data mining, HPC.

Responsibilities

• Identify and frame research challenges in AI security at the product level.
• Contribute to the team’s scientific agenda across monitoring, protection, remediation, and asset discovery.
• Publish results at peer-reviewed venues when appropriate.
• Design and deliver security solutions into production, both new and evolved systems.
• Write substantial portions of production code for detection, validation, and asset classification.

Skills

Modeling for business applications

Java/C++/Python

AI security

Algorithms & data structures

Research publication experience

Education

PhD or Master's with 4+ years CS/CE/ML

Tools

Unix/Linux

Professional software development

Job description

We are seeking an Applied Scientist to contribute to research and development of novel security validation and monitoring techniques for AI systems at scale. You will own and contribute to four critical work-streams:

• Real-Time Agent Monitoring
• Design and implement scientific approaches for continuous behavioral analysis of AI agents in production—detecting anomalous actions, prompt injection exploitation, and policy violations in real time.
• Protection & Automated Remediation
• Invent and deliver novel protection technologies and automated remediation techniques building on research in security, cryptography, privacy, automated reasoning, and other domains, to enable safe and secure agentic AI models and AI applications.
• AI Application and Capabilities Validation
• Invent and deliver scalable methodologies for security testing of AI applications and AI capabilities (e.g. MCP, skills), including adversarial robustness evaluation, safety guardrail bypass detection, tool-use authorization boundaries, and trust boundary verification.
• AI Asset Discovery & Inventory
• Research and build scalable techniques to automatically discover, identify, and catalog all AI-enabled applications, services, and capabilities across the company—maintaining a comprehensive, continuously updated database of AI assets.

Key job responsibilities

• Identify and frame new research challenges in AI security where problems are ill-defined and require novel scientific paradigms at the product level.
• Contribute to the team's scientific agenda for agent monitoring, protection, remediation, validation research, and AI asset discovery.
• Publish research results at peer-reviewed internal and external venues (e.g., USENIX Security, ACM CCS, IEEE S&P, NeurIPS, ICML security workshops, ICSE, PETS) when appropriate.
• Articulate key scientific challenges of current and future AI security threats and deliver novel research to address them.
• Design, implementation, and successful delivery of scientifically complex security solutions into production—both brand new systems and evolutions of existing ones.
• Write significant portions of critical-path code for detection models, validation engines, protection technologies, and asset discovery / classification systems.
• Assess and select appropriate technologies (e.g., data protection, private inference, graph-based anomaly detection, NLP-based service classification, code/traffic analysis for AI fingerprinting) for production systems.
• Use best practices in scientific methodology and software engineering across the team; provide insightful peer reviews of code, design, and architecture artifacts.
• Deliver solutions that are inventive, maintainable, scalable, and extensible.
• Autonomously drive discussions with security engineers, software engineers, product managers, and scientist peers across multiple teams.
• Build consensus on larger cross-team security initiatives and factor complex efforts into independent workstreams.
• Identify and resolve endemic problems, including areas where current security tooling limits innovation of partner teams.
• Contribute to the broader internal and external scientific communities as a subject matter expert in AI security.

About The Team

Diverse Experiences

Amazon Security values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn’t followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don’t let it stop you from applying.

Why Amazon Security?

At Amazon, security is central to maintaining customer trust and delivering delightful customer experiences. Our organization is responsible for creating and maintaining a high bar for security across all of Amazon’s products and services. We offer talented security professionals the chance to accelerate their careers with opportunities to build experience in a wide variety of areas including cloud, devices, retail, entertainment, healthcare, operations, and physical stores.

Inclusive Team Culture

In Amazon Security, it’s in our nature to learn and be curious. Ongoing DEI events and learning experiences inspire us to continue learning and to embrace our uniqueness. Addressing the toughest security challenges requires that we seek out and celebrate a diversity of ideas, perspectives, and voices.

Training & Career Growth

We’re continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth’s Best Employer. That’s why you’ll find endless knowledge-sharing, training, and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional.

Work/Life Balance

We value work-life harmony. Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why flexible work hours and arrangements are part of our culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve.

Basic Qualifications

• 3+ years of building models for business application experience
• PhD, or Master's degree and 4+ years of CS, CE, ML or related field experience
• Experience in patents or publications at top-tier peer-reviewed conferences or journals
• Experience programming in Java, C++, Python or related language
• Experience in any of the following areas: algorithms and data structures, parsing, numerical optimization, data mining, parallel and distributed computing, high-performance computing

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience using Unix/Linux
• Experience in professional software development

Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status, disability, or other legally protected status.

Our inclusive culture empowers Amazonians to deliver the best results for our customers. If you have a disability and need a workplace accommodation or adjustment during the application and hiring process, including support for the interview or onboarding process, please visit https://amazon.jobs/content/en/how-we-hire/accommodations for more information. If the country/region you’re applying in isn’t listed, please contact your Recruiting Partner.

The base salary range for this position is listed below. Your Amazon package will include sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs). Final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience, qualifications, and location. Amazon also offers comprehensive benefits including health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans, EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line, Flexible Spending Accounts, Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage), 401(k) matching, paid time off, and parental leave. Learn more about our benefits at https://amazon.jobs/en/benefits.

USA, NY, New York - 172,400.00 - 223,400.00 USD annually

USA, WA, Seattle - 142,800.00 - 193,200.00 USD annually