Principal Applied Scientist, Personalization

Amazon Science; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Amazon Science seeks a Principal Applied Scientist to lead transformative ML initiatives in personalized shopping. You will architect science strategy for a large, multidisciplinary organization, shipping ML-powered products to hundreds of millions of customers and shaping real-time ranking and recommendation systems.

You will mentor scientists, define the frontier in LLM-based reasoning, and collaborate with product, design, and engineering to turn ideas into scalable, production-ready

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 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 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

Responsibilities

• Innovate new features and models that have huge impact on the customer experience.
• Leverage the use of advanced machine learning to create customer shopping experience at Amazon's scale - for all Amazon customers across all countries in realtime
• Be a key leader on a multidisciplinary team across science, product, design, and engineering to see through ideas from inception, prototype, to launch in the hands of all Amazon's customers
• Drive the science roadmap across multiple teams, helping coordinate a cohesive science agenda across the org.
• Mentoring applied scientists across the org, growing their skills and careers.

Skills

ML model development

Production ML systems

Mentoring

Stakeholder communication

Education

PhD in CS/ML/Statistics

Master's with 6+ years of applied research

Tools

Python

Java

C++

Job description

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, operating at a scale no human ever could.

This is a complex personalization challenge. We sit at the intersection of massive-scale language understanding, real-time decision systems, hundreds of millions of customers, and billions of products. Our mission is to collapse the distance between intent and discovery—to make the leap from "searching for products" to "being understood as a person".

As a Principal Applied Scientist, you will be the intellectual engine behind this transformation. You will define the frontier, architect the science strategy for a large, multidisciplinary organization, and drive breakthroughs that reshape how Amazon thinks about customers and products at the deepest level.

The problems you'll solve don't have textbook answers. You will pioneer next-generation LLM-based reasoning systems that build rich, evolving models of customer intent. You will design transformer architectures that abstract noisy behavioral signals into high-quality latent representations of human preference. You will invent real-time, multi-objective ranking systems that balance exploration, personalization, and serendipity at billions of decisions per day. And you will do all of this as a force multiplier, building foundational technology that empowers teams across Amazon to deliver experiences that feel almost magical.

Your work will be felt, not just measured. Every model you build ships directly to hundreds of millions of customers. The feedback loop between your science and real human delight is immediate. This role offers a rare combination of intellectual depth, technical ambition, and tangible impact.

Come define what shopping looks like in the age of AI!

Key job responsibilities

• Innovate new features and models that have huge impact on the customer experience. Help customers find the right products and content on their shopping journey.
• Leverage the use of advanced machine learning to create customer shopping experience at Amazon's scale - for all Amazon customers across all countries in realtime
• Be a key leader on a multidisciplinary team across science, product, design, and engineering to see through ideas from inception, prototype, to launch in the hands of all Amazon's customers
• Drive the science roadmap across multiple teams, helping coordinate a cohesive science agenda across the org.
• Mentoring applied scientists across the org, growing their skills and careers.

About The Team

Our mission is to delight every Amazon customer with a personalized shopping experience tailed to their intent. We achieve our mission 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 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 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

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.