Principal Applied Scientist

Seattle, WA, United States

Job ID: Amazon Development Center U.S., Inc. – B02

Amazon is looking for world class Principal Applied Scientist to join its AWS Fundamental Research Team working within a variety of machine learning disciplines. This group is entrusted with developing core machine learning solutions for AWS services. At the AWS Fundamental Research Team you will invent, implement, and deploy state of the art machine learning algorithms and systems. You will build prototypes and explore conceptually large scale ML solutions. You will interact closely with our customers and with the academic community. You will be at the heart of a growing and exciting focus area for AWS and work with other acclaimed engineers and world famous scientists.

AWS Fundamental Research is part of AWS Utility Computing (UC)

Utility Computing (UC)

AWS Utility Computing (UC) provides product innovations – from foundational services such as Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), to consistently released new product innovations that continue to set AWS's services and features apart in the industry. As a member of the UC organization, you'll support the development and management of Compute, Database, Storage, Internet of Things (Iot), Platform, and Productivity Apps services in AWS, including support for customers who require specialized security solutions for their cloud services.

About AWS

Diverse Experiences

AWS values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn't followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don't let it stop you from applying.

Why AWS?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. We pioneered cloud computing and never stopped innovating – that's why customers from the most successful startups to Global 500 companies trust our robust suite of products and services to power their businesses.

Inclusive Team Culture

Here at AWS, it's in our nature to learn and be curious. Our employee–led affinity groups foster a culture of inclusion that empower us to be proud of our differences. Ongoing events and learning experiences, including our Conversations on Race and Ethnicity (CORE) and AmazeCon (gender diversity) conferences, inspire us to never stop embracing our uniqueness.

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Work/Life Balance

We value work–life harmony. Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why we strive for flexibility as part of our working culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there's nothing we can't achieve in the cloud.

Hybrid Work

We value innovation and recognize this sometimes requires uninterrupted time to focus on a build. We also value in–person collaboration and time spent face–to–face. Our team affords employees options to work in the office every day or in a flexible, hybrid work model near one of our US Amazon offices.

Key job responsibilities

As an Principal Applied Scientist, you will take on challenging and ambiguous customer problems, distill customer requirements, and then deliver solutions that either leverage existing academic and medical research or utilize your own out–of–the–box but pragmatic thinking.

In addition to coming up with novel solutions and prototypes, you will directly contribute to its implementation.

A successful candidate has excellent technical depth, scientific vision, great implementation skills, and a drive to achieve results in a collaborative team environment. You should enjoy the process of solving real–world, open–ended problems that, quite frankly, haven't been solved at scale anywhere before. Along the way, we guarantee you'll get opportunities to be a fearless disruptor, prolific innovator, and a reputed problem solver–someone who truly enables machine learning and statistics to truly impact the lives and health of millions of customers.

You mentor and help develop a team of Applied Scientists and SDEs and work with key leaders to guide this top talent to push the boundary of science and next generation of product. They will lead the technical implementation of our evidence–based retrieval sub–system that ingests, indexes and retrieves relevant data in different forms and from multiple sources given the customer question and context.

We are open to hiring candidates to work out of one of the following locations:

Palo Alto, CA, USA

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS • Ph.D. degree in Statistics, Computer Science, Applied Math, or a related field with publications in refereed academic journals

• 7+ years of hands–on experience in solving difficult machine learning problems

• Expert at more than one major programming languages (C++, Java, or similar) and at least one scripting language (Perl, Python, or similar)

• Demonstrated ability to serve as a technical lead

• Excellent writing skills for presenting business cases and scientific models with rigorous analyses that support results/conclusions to influence important decisions.

• Strong fundamentals in problem solving, algorithm design and complexity analysis

• Proven track in leading, mentoring, and growing teams of scientists

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS • Deep technical knowledge of machine learning and statistical methodologies

• Experience with deep learning toolkits and frameworks

• Solid software development experience

• Algorithm and model development experience for large–scale applications

• Experience with defining research and development practices in an applied environment Excellent communication skills, both written and oral, with technical and business people.

• Professional traits, that are not unique to this position but are necessary for Amazon leaders, including exhibiting excellent judgment; maintaining relentlessly high standards; thinking strategically while staying on top of tactical execution; expecting innovation from collaborators; thinking big; having convictions; being results oriented; and inspiring passion in others about learning, research, and implementation

Amazon is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or other legally protected status. For individuals with disabilities who would like to request an accommodation, please visit

Our compensation reflects the cost of labor across several US geographic markets. The base pay for this position ranges from $179,000/year in our lowest geographic market up to $309,400/year in our highest geographic market. Pay is based on a number of factors including market location and may vary depending on job–related knowledge, skills, and experience. Amazon is a total compensation company. Dependent on the position offered, equity, sign–on payments, and other forms of compensation may be provided as part of a total compensation package, in addition to a full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits. For more information, please visit This position will remain posted until filled. Applicants should apply via our internal or external career site.

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Amazon is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or other legally protected status.

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