Senior Applied Scientist, Fauna

Amazon Inc.; New York (NY); On-site; USD 184,000 - 249,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k) matching

Paid time off

Parental leave

RSUs

Job summary

Fauna Robotics, an Amazon company, seeks an Applied Scientist to lead evaluation frameworks for robotic capabilities. You will design how we measure, stress-test, and improve robot behavior across real-world tasks, shaping validation policies and data generation for model development.

You will work at the intersection of robotics, machine learning, and human-in-the-loop systems, building infrastructure that connects teleoperation, evaluation, and learning.

Qualifications

• PhD or Master with 6+ years of applied research experience.
• Strong background in robotics, ML, or related fields.
• Publications or patents in top-tier venues.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement evaluation frameworks to measure robot capabilities across structured tasks and real-world scenarios.
• Develop task definitions, success criteria, and benchmarking methodologies for reproducible evaluation of policies.
• Create and refine data collection protocols that generate high-quality, task-relevant datasets.
• Build and iterate teleoperation workflows and operator interfaces for scalable data collection.
• Analyze evaluation results to identify performance gaps and data needs.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to integrate evaluation tooling and data pipelines.
• Stay current with advances in robotics and human-in-the-loop learning to improve approaches.
• Lead technical projects from conception through production deployment.
• Mentor junior scientists and engineers.

Skills

Applied research

Java

C++

Python

Publications

Education

PhD or Masters with 6+ years experience

Tools

R

scikit-learn

Spark MLlib

MxNet

TensorFlow

NumPy

SciPy

Job description

Job ID: 10583804 | Amazon.com Services LLC

We are seeking an Applied Scientist to lead the development of evaluation frameworks and data collection protocols for robotic capabilities.

In this role, you will focus on designing how we measure, stress-test, and improve robot behavior across a wide range of real-world tasks. Your work will play a critical role in shaping how policies are validated and how high-quality datasets are generated to accelerate system performance.

You will operate at the intersection of robotics, machine learning, and human-in-the-loop systems, building the infrastructure and methodologies that connect teleoperation, evaluation, and learning.

This includes developing evaluation policies, defining task structures, and contributing to operator-facing interfaces that enable scalable and reliable data collection.

The ideal candidate is highly experimental, systems-oriented, and comfortable working across software, robotics, and data pipelines, with a strong focus on turning ambiguous capability goals into measurable and actionable evaluation systems.

Key job responsibilities

• Design and implement evaluation frameworks to measure robot capabilities across structured tasks, edge cases, and real-world scenarios
• Develop task definitions, success criteria, and benchmarking methodologies that enable consistent and reproducible evaluation of policies
• Create and refine data collection protocols that generate high-quality, task-relevant datasets aligned with model development needs
• Build and iterate on teleoperation workflows and operator interfaces to support efficient, reliable, and scalable data collection
• Analyze evaluation results and collected data to identify performance gaps, failure modes, and opportunities for targeted data collection
• Collaborate with engineering teams to integrate evaluation tooling, logging systems, and data pipelines into the broader robotics stack
• Stay current with advances in robotics, evaluation methodologies, and human-in-the-loop learning to continuously improve internal approaches
• Lead technical projects from conception through production deployment
• Mentor junior scientists and engineers

About the team

Fauna Robotics, an Amazon company, is building capable, safe, and genuinely delightful robots for everyday life. Our goal is simple: make robots people actually want to live and interact with in everyday human spaces.

We believe that future won’t arrive until building for robotics becomes far more accessible. Today, too much effort is spent reinventing the fundamentals. We’re changing that by developing tightly integrated hardware and software systems that make it faster, safer, and more intuitive to create real-world robotic products.

Our work spans the full stack: mechanical design, control systems, dynamic modeling, and intelligent software. The focus is not just functionality, but experience. We’re building robots that feel responsive, expressive, and genuinely useful.

At Fauna, you’ll work at the frontier of this space, helping define how robots move, manipulate, and interact with people in natural environments. It’s an opportunity to solve hard problems across hardware and software with a team focused on making robotics accessible and joyful to build.

If you care about making robotics real for everyone and building systems that are as delightful as they are capable, we’re interested in hearing from you.

Basic Qualifications

• PhD, or Master's degree and 6+ years of applied research experience
• Experience programming in Java, C++, Python or related language
• Experience in patents or publications at top-tier peer-reviewed conferences or journals
• Experience in any of the following areas: algorithms and data structures, parsing, numerical optimization, data mining, parallel and distributed computing, high-performance computing

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with modeling tools such as R, scikit-learn, Spark MLLib, MxNet, Tensorflow, numpy, scipy etc.
• Experience with large scale distributed systems such as Hadoop, Spark etc.

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.

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, NY, New York - 183,800.00 - 248,700.00 USD annually