Senior Applied Scientist

Amazon; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 167,100 - 226,100; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k) matching

Paid time off

Job summary

Amazon is seeking an innovative Applied Scientist in Seattle, WA to enhance its product catalog using Generative AI and cutting-edge ML algorithms. Responsibilities include formulating research problems, designing ML models, and mentoring peers in techniques addressing product identity and relationships. Candidates should have 4+ years of research experience with strong programming skills in Java, C++, or Python. The position offers a competitive salary between $167,100 and $226,100 annually, along with comprehensive health benefits and a commitment to inclusion.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of applied research experience.
• Experience programming in Java, C++, Python or related language.
• Experience with neural deep learning methods and machine learning.

Responsibilities

• Formulate research problems at the intersection of GenAI and information retrieval.
• Design and implement models to solve product identity and relationship inference.
• Mentor peer scientists on advanced ML techniques.

Skills

Applied research

Machine learning model building

Programming (Java, C++, Python)

Neural deep learning methods

Statistical analysis

Education

PhD or Master's with 6+ years of applied research

Tools

Generative AI techniques

Visual Language Models

Multimodal transformers

Job description

Overview

At Amazon Selection and Catalog Systems (ASCS), our mission is to power the online buying experience for customers worldwide so they can find, discover, and buy any product they want. We innovate on behalf of our customers to ensure uniqueness and consistency of product identity and to infer relationships between products in Amazon Catalog to drive the selection gateway for the search and browse experiences on the website. We're solving a fundamental AI challenge: establishing product identity and relationships at unprecedented scale. Using Generative AI, Visual Language Models (VLMs), and multimodal reasoning, we determine what makes each product unique and how products relate to one another across Amazon's catalog. The scale is staggering: billions of products, petabytes of multimodal data, millions of sellers, dozens of languages, and infinite product diversity—from electronics to groceries to digital content.

Amazon's Item and Relationship Platform group is looking for an innovative and customer-focused applied scientist to help us make the world's best product catalog even better. In this role, you will partner with technology and business leaders to build new state‑of‑the‑art algorithms, models, and services to infer product‑to‑product relationships that matter to our customers. You will pioneer advanced GenAI solutions that power next‑generation agentic shopping experiences, working in a collaborative environment where you can experiment with massive data from the world's largest product catalog, tackle problems at the frontier of AI research, and rapidly implement and deploy your algorithmic ideas at scale across millions of customers.

Job Responsibilities

• Formulate novel research problems at the intersection of GenAI, multimodal learning, and large‑scale information retrieval—translating ambiguous business challenges into tractable scientific frameworks.
• Design and implement leading models leveraging VLMs, foundation models, and agentic architectures to solve product identity, relationship inference, and catalog understanding at billion‑product scale.
• Pioneer explainable AI methodologies that balance model performance with scalability requirements for production systems impacting millions of daily customer decisions.
• Own end‑to‑end ML pipelines from research ideation to production deployment—processing petabytes of multimodal data with rigorous evaluation frameworks.
• Define research roadmaps aligned with business priorities, balancing foundational research with incremental product improvements.
• Mentor peer scientists and engineers on advanced ML techniques, experimental design, and scientific rigor—building organizational capability in GenAI and multimodal AI.
• Represent the team in the broader science community—publishing findings, delivering tech talks, and staying at the forefront of GenAI, VLM, and agentic system research.

Basic Qualifications

• 4+ years of applied research experience.
• 3+ years of building machine learning models for business application experience.
• PhD, or Master's degree and 6+ years of applied research experience.
• Experience programming in Java, C++, Python or related language.
• Experience with neural deep learning methods and machine learning.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with training and deploying machine learning systems to solve large‑scale optimizations.
• Prior experience in the domains of LLMs, foundation models, or large‑scale deep learning systems.
• Publications in top‑tier venues such as NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, ICCV, EMNLP, ACL, NAACL, COLING, KDD, SIGMOD, WWW, AAAI, or similar.
• Experience with Visual Language Models (VLMs), multimodal transformers, or vision‑language pretraining.
• Experience with explainable AI, model interpretability, or uncertainty quantification.
• Strong experimental design skills and statistical analysis expertise.
• Hands‑on experience with Generative AI, including prompt engineering, fine‑tuning, RLHF, or agentic architectures.

Base salary range: $167,100 – $226,100 USD annually.

Benefits include health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription), basic life & AD&D insurance, optional supplemental life plans, employee assistance program, mental health support, medical advice line, flexible spending accounts, adoption and surrogacy reimbursement coverage, 401(k) matching, paid time off, and parental leave. Full benefits information can be found at https://amazon.jobs/en/benefits.

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