Principal Applied Scientist Perception, Compass

Amazon; Pasadena (CA); On-site; USD 199,000 - 269,000; Full time

Job summary

Amazon is seeking a Principle Applied Scientist to lead perception for Compass safety systems. You will own perception inputs, build real-time predictive models, and guide the safety architecture across teams—controls, planning, and firmware. The role emphasizes advancing environment understanding beyond static scenes to support safe robot operation.

You will mentor researchers, publish at top venues, and influence organizational strategy for safety in robotic perception.

Qualifications

• PhD in a technical field with robotics focus.
• Strong publications in top venues are preferred.
• Experience deploying perception systems on robots.

Responsibilities

• Define long-term scientific vision for safe perception across platforms.
• Develop real-time perception algorithms for dynamic environments.
• Ensure perception outputs align with safety constraints and guarantees.
• Quantify and bound perception uncertainty with calibrated estimates.
• Architect pipelines across sensor modalities and robot morphologies.
• Collaborate with controls and planning teams to define interfaces.
• Publish research and mentor a team of scientists.

Skills

3D scene understanding

Object detection

Motion prediction

Python

C++

Robotics perception

Education

PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, or related field

Tools

ROS

TensorFlow/PyTorch

Job description

Description

We are seeking a Principle Applied Scientist to join Compass. In this role, you will own the perception input into the Compass safety system, defining how robots perceive, interpret, and anticipate their surroundings in safety-critical contexts. You will develop novel approaches to environment understanding that go beyond static scene representation, providing real-time, predictive models of how humans, objects, and dynamic obstacles may evolve over short time horizons. Your work will directly unlock robot performance by replacing conservative assumptions with precise, learned understandings of risk. You will set the scientific direction for perception within Compass, collaborate closely with controls, planning, and firmware teams, and influence the broader Amazon Robotics safety architecture.

We are seeking a Principle Applied Scientist to join Compass. In this role, you will own the perception input into the Compass safety system, defining how robots perceive, interpret, and anticipate their surroundings in safety-critical contexts. You will develop novel approaches to environment understanding that go beyond static scene representation, providing real-time, predictive models of how humans, objects, and dynamic obstacles may evolve over short time horizons. Your work will directly unlock robot performance by replacing conservative assumptions with precise, learned understandings of risk. You will set the scientific direction for perception within Compass, collaborate closely with controls, planning, and firmware teams, and influence the broader Amazon Robotics safety architecture.

Key job responsibilities

• Define and drive the long-term scientific vision for safety-critical perception within Compass, spanning multiple robot platforms and deployment environments
• Develop novel perception algorithms that provide real-time, predictive representations of dynamic environments including human motion forecasting, obstacle trajectory prediction, and scene evolution modeling
• Design perception outputs that are tightly coupled to safety constraints, enabling control barrier functions to operate with minimal conservatism while maintaining formal safety guarantees
• Research and develop methods to quantify and bound perception uncertainty, providing calibrated confidence estimates that safety systems can reason over
• Architect perception pipelines that generalize across sensor modalities (LiDAR, depth cameras, RGB, radar) and robot morphologies without platform-specific retraining
• Investigate the application of foundation models and large-scale pre-training to safety-critical perception tasks, establishing when and how learned representations can be trusted at safety-critical confidence levels
• Collaborate with controls, motion planning, and firmware teams to define interface contracts between perception and downstream safety modules
• Publish research at top-tier venues and represent Amazon Robotics in the broader academic and industry community
• Mentor and develop a team of applied scientists and research engineers
• Influence Amazon Robotics' safety architecture and perception strategy at the organizational level

About The Team

Work with the inventors of control barrier functions on a novel, universal approach to safe autonomy. You'll push the boundary of safe performance by integrating safety with motion planning, RL, and foundation models, ensuring that safety is never a blocker to robot performance.

Basic Qualifications

• PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, or a related technical field
• 6+ years of experience in perception research and development, with a significant portion in robotics or embodied AI
• Deep expertise in one or more of: 3D scene understanding, object detection and tracking, motion prediction, occupancy forecasting, or semantic scene representation
• Proven track record of publications at top-tier venues (e.g., CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, NeurIPS, ICRA, RSS, CoRL)
• Experience deploying perception systems on physical robots operating in unstructured or human-shared environments
• Proficiency in Python and C++ with experience writing production-grade perception code
• Demonstrated ability to set technical direction and influence across teams at a senior level

Preferred Qualifications

• 10+ years of relevant work in industry or academia experience
• Experience creating novel algorithms and advancing the state of the art
• Have peer-reviewed scientific contributions in premier journals and conferences
• Experience with safety-critical perception, including uncertainty quantification, out-of-distribution detection, or formal verification of learned perception models
• Familiarity with control barrier functions, reachability analysis, or other formal safety methods and how perception feeds into them
• Experience with real-time perception on resource-constrained hardware (edge compute, embedded GPUs)
• Track record of building perception systems that generalize across multiple sensor configurations or robot platforms
• Experience with foundation models or large-scale self-supervised learning applied to robotics perception
• Knowledge of functional safety standards (e.g., IEC 61508, ISO 13849) as they relate to perception system design
• Experience with human motion prediction, intent estimation, or social navigation
• Demonstrated ability to build and lead a research team, including hiring, mentoring, and career development
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills with experience influencing product and architecture decisions at the organizational level

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

Los Angeles County applicants: Job duties for this position include: work safely and cooperatively with other employees, supervisors, and staff; adhere to standards of excellence despite stressful conditions; communicate effectively and respectfully with employees, supervisors, and staff to ensure exceptional customer service; and follow all federal, state, and local laws and Company policies. Criminal history may have a direct, adverse, and negative relationship with some of the material job duties of this position. These include the duties and responsibilities listed above, as well as the abilities to adhere to company policies, exercise sound judgment, effectively manage stress and work safely and respectfully with others, exhibit trustworthiness and professionalism, and safeguard business operations and the Company’s reputation. Pursuant to the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

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, CA, PASADENA - 198,900.00 - 269,000.00 USD annually

Company

Amazon.com LLC

Job ID: A10450084