Principal Applied Scientist, Personalization

Amazon; Culver City (CA); On-site; USD 198,900 - 269,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k) matching

Paid time off

Parental leave

Job summary

Amazon is seeking a Principal Applied Scientist to lead the science charter across recommendations and intent identification. This role involves innovating ML features to enhance customer experience and mentoring junior scientists within a multidisciplinary team.

The ideal candidate will have a PhD or Master’s with significant experience in building and deploying ML models at scale, coupled with strong programming skills in languages such as Python, Java, or C++. A comprehensive benefits package accompanies the competitive salary range of $198,900–$269,000 a year.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience building machine learning models for business applications.
• Hands-on experience deploying models at scale.
• Experience mentoring junior scientists and engineers.

Responsibilities

• Innovate features having huge impact on customer experience.
• Leverage advanced machine learning for real-time decision systems.
• Mentor applied scientists and coordinate a cohesive science agenda.

Skills

Machine Learning

Python

Java

C++

Statistical Analysis

Education

PhD in Computer Science or related field

Master’s degree with 6+ years experience

Tools

Machine Learning frameworks

Data analysis tools

Job description

Reinventing How the World Shops! We are building the future of human‑AI collaboration in commerce. We are creating an AI‑native shopping partner that truly understands what customers mean, what they need, and what they haven’t yet realized they want—rivaling the intuition of the best human experts at a scale no human ever could. This is a complex personalization challenge at the intersection of massive‑scale language understanding, real‑time decision systems, hundreds of millions of customers, and billions of products.

Key Job Responsibilities

• Innovate new features and models that have huge impact on the customer experience, helping customers find the right products and content on their shopping journey.
• Leverage advanced machine learning to create a customer shopping experience at Amazon’s scale for all Amazon customers across all countries in real‑time.
• Act as a key leader on a multidisciplinary team across science, product, design, and engineering to see ideas from inception, prototype, to launch in the hands of all Amazon customers.
• Drive the science roadmap across multiple teams, coordinating a cohesive science agenda across the organization.
• Mentor applied scientists across the organization, growing their skills and careers.

About the Team

Our mission is to delight every Amazon customer with a personalized shopping experience tailored to their intent. We achieve this through investments in Science, UX, and central systems with the purpose of delivering the future of shopping on Amazon. We are seeking a Principal Applied Scientist to lead the science charter across the recommendations and intent identification space.

Basic Qualifications

• PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, or related field, OR Master’s degree and 6+ years of applied research experience.
• 5+ years of building machine learning models for business applications, with a proven track record of shipping ML‑powered products to production.
• Deep expertise in machine learning engineering with hands‑on experience building and deploying models at scale.
• Strong programming skills in Python, Java, C++, or related languages with an ability to write production‑quality code.
• Experience mentoring junior scientists and engineers.
• Experience distilling informal customer requirements into problem definitions, dealing with ambiguity and competing objectives.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience creating novel algorithms and advancing the state of the art.
• Experience communicating with users, other technical teams, and management to collect requirements, describe software product features, and technical designs.
• Publications at top‑tier peer‑reviewed conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, ICCV, KDD, RecSys) or patents demonstrating technical innovation.
• Track record of successful production ML deployments at scale with measurable business impact.
• Strategic thinking combined with strong execution capability and bias for action.
• Experience bridging research with practical engineering implementation.
• Technical leadership experience in fast‑paced, ambiguous environments.

Benefits & Compensation

The base salary for this position is 198,900.00 – 269,000.00 USD annually. Amazon also offers a comprehensive benefits package, including health insurance, 401(k) matching, paid time off, and parental leave. Your compensation will include sign‑on payments, restricted stock units (RSUs), and other incentives based on experience, qualifications, and location.

Location

USA, WA, Seattle.

Equal Opportunity Employer

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