Applied Scientist, Autonomous Robot Navigation

Amazon; Massachusetts; On-site; USD 143,000 - 193,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k) matching

Paid time off

Parental leave

Employee assistance program

Job summary

Amazon.com Services LLC is seeking a Scientist in Robot Navigation to architect and deliver intelligent, safe, and scalable navigation systems for autonomous robots. You will combine learning-based planning with principled control, including MPC-based trajectory planning, and apply foundation models to embodied agents.

The role spans research to production, leading initiatives in perception, sensing, and 3D understanding, with collaboration across robotics, software, and product teams to advance

Qualifications

• Experience programming in Java, C++, Python or related language.
• PhD in Robotics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Controls, or a related field
• 2+ years of experience in robot navigation, motion planning, or autonomous systems
• Deep expertise in learning-based approaches to navigation (e.g., imitation learning, reinforcement learning, neural motion planning, diffusion-based policies)
• Strong experience with Model Predictive Control (MPC) and optimization-based planning (PyTorch, JAX, or equivalent)
• Proven track record of translating research into deployed systems

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and deploy perception algorithms for robotics systems, including object detection, segmentation, tracking, depth estimation, and scene understanding
• Lead research initiatives in computer vision, sensor fusion and 3D perception
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams including robotics engineers, software engineers, and product managers to define and deliver perception capabilities
• Drive end-to-end ownership of ML models — from data collection and labeling strategy to training, evaluation, and deployment
• Mentor junior scientists and engineers; contribute to a culture of technical excellence
• Define and track key metrics to measure perception system performance in real-world environments
• Publish research findings in top-tier venues (CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ICRA, NeurIPS, etc.) and contribute to patents

Skills

Java, C++, Python

Learning-based navigation

Model Predictive Control (MPC)

Translating research to deployment

Education

PhD in Robotics/CS/EE/Controls

Tools

ROS/ROS2

Real-time robotics middleware

Isaac Sim / MuJoCo / Gazebo

Job description

Amazon.com Services LLC is seeking a Scientist in Robot Navigation to architect and deliver intelligent, safe, and scalable navigation systems for autonomous robots. You will combine learning-based planning with principled control, including MPC-based trajectory planning, and apply foundation models to embodied agents.

The role spans research to production, leading initiatives in perception, sensing, and 3D understanding, with collaboration across robotics, software, and product teams to advance