Amazon.com Inc logo

Principal Applied Scientist, Personalization

Amazon.com Inc
  • Seattle, WA
    30 days ago

    Job 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.

    Numbers & Facts

    LocationSeattle, WA
    IndustryRetail
    Company Size10,000 employees or more
    Year Founded1994
    Websitehttp://Amazon.com/militaryroles

    About Company

    At Amazon, we don’t wait for the next big idea to present itself. We envision the shape of impossible things and then we boldly make them reality. So far, this mindset has helped us achieve some incredible things. Let’s build new systems, challenge the status quo, and design the world we want to live in. We believe the work you do here will be the best work of your life.

    Wherever you are in your career exploration, Amazon likely has an opportunity for you. Our research scientists and engineers shape the future of natural language understanding with Alexa. Fulfillment center associates around the globe send customer orders from our warehouses to doorsteps. Product managers set feature requirements, strategy, and marketing messages for brand new customer experiences. And as we grow, we’ll add jobs that haven’t been invented yet.

    It’s Always Day 1
    At Amazon, it’s always “Day 1.” Now, what does this mean and why does it matter? It means that our approach remains the same as it was on Amazon’s very first day – to make smart, fast decisions, stay nimble, invent, and stay focused on delighting our customers. In our 2016 shareholder letter, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos shared his thoughts on how to keep up a Day 1 company mindset. “Staying in Day 1 requires you to experiment patiently, accept failures, plant seeds, protect saplings, and double down when you see customer delight,” he wrote. “A customer-obsessed culture best creates the conditions where all of that can happen.” You can read the full letter here

    Our Leadership Principles
    Our Leadership Principles help us keep a Day 1 mentality. They aren’t just a pretty inspirational wall hanging. Amazonians use them, every day, whether they’re discussing ideas for new projects, deciding on the best solution for a customer’s problem, or interviewing candidates. To read through our Leadership Principles from Customer Obsession to Bias for Action, visit https://www.amazon.jobs/principles

    Skills

    • Architectural Designunmatched
    • Artificial Intelligence (AI)unmatched
    • Cross-Functionalunmatched
    • Customer Experienceunmatched
    • Customer Support/Serviceunmatched
    • Machine Learningunmatched
    • Mentoringunmatched
    • Product Designunmatched
    • Prototypingunmatched
    • Technical/Engineering Designunmatched
    • User Interface/Experience (UI/UX)unmatched

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