Senior Applied Science Lead, Sponsored Products & Brands

Amazon Inc.; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 252,000 - 340,000; Full time

Job summary

Amazon in Palo Alto is seeking a Sr. Manager of Applied Science to lead the Sponsored Products and Brands, Search Relevance team. You will shape how products are presented and ensure relevant, trustworthy recommendations across search results.

The role requires building scalable AI systems, defining success metrics, and partnering with cross‑functional leaders to drive strategic initiatives across Search, Retail, and Advertising. Strong leadership and deep ML expertise are essential.

Qualifications

• PhD in Computer Science, ML, Statistics or related field, or Master's with 10+ years of applied science experience.
• 8+ years of hands-on experience building and deploying AI models at scale (NLP, IR, or recommendation).
• 5+ years leading teams of applied scientists or ML engineers with hiring/mentoring.
• Led end-to-end AI projects from problem formulation to deployment and metrics.
• Strong depth in relevance modeling, ranking, or search quality evaluation.
• Experience partnering with cross-functional teams to align goals and roadmaps.
• Proficiency with PyTorch and TensorFlow; experience with Spark and distributed computing.
• Experience communicating complex technical concepts to senior leadership.

Responsibilities

• Lead development of predictive models to mitigate irrelevant or low-quality product recommendations.
• Design and scale AI-powered systems to improve search results.
• Expand search quality definition beyond query relevance to shopper preferences and context.
• Own measurement of customer experience metrics reported to leadership.
• Build scalable measurement frameworks for evolving search formats.
• Invest in AI infrastructure to reduce CX measurement costs.
• Develop AI models with reduced manual auditing and data generation effort.
• Create novel product experiences with intelligent image/title selection and contextual explanations.

Skills

AI leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

NLP

Information retrieval

Recommendation systems

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Spark

Executive communication

Education

PhD in Computer Science, ML, Statistics

Master's in related quantitative field

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Spark

Distributed computing

Job description

Amazon in Palo Alto is seeking a Sr. Manager of Applied Science to lead the Sponsored Products and Brands, Search Relevance team. You will shape how products are presented and ensure relevant, trustworthy recommendations across search results.

The role requires building scalable AI systems, defining success metrics, and partnering with cross‑functional leaders to drive strategic initiatives across Search, Retail, and Advertising. Strong leadership and deep ML expertise are essential.