Social

SocialBot Grand Challenge FAQs

Frequently asked questions about the challenge.
General
General
What is a SocialBot?
In the context of Alexa Prize, a SocialBot is an Alexa skill that can engage customers in a conversation about popular topics such as entertainment, sports, politics, technology, and fashion.
Can I choose to build any kind of conversational bot?
No, this competition focuses solely on SocialBots. Your SocialBot will need to converse about a wide range of popular societal topics and current events, and not only topics of your choosing. You will develop your own technologies relevant to your approach, such as natural language understanding, dialog management, knowledge acquisition, commonsense reasoning, conversational planning, machine learning, natural language generation, etc. Far-field automatic speech recognition (ASR) and text-to-speech (TTS) will be provided by Amazon, along with additional data, models, and tools.
What will my SocialBot do?
Your SocialBot will be an Alexa skill that can converse coherently and engagingly with humans on popular topics and current events. If your SocialBot advances to the pertinent stage of the competition, Alexa users in the U.S. may ask to converse with your SocialBot about topics of interest to them, such as baseball playoffs, celebrity gossip, or scientific breakthroughs. For example:
  • User: Let’s chat about the Mars Mission.
  • SocialBot: There are multiple Mars missions, some public and some private.
  • User: Who do you think will succeed?
  • SocialBot: I think more than one will succeed. The first one to get to Mars will open the doors for others.
  • User: I’d love to go to Mars.
  • SocialBot: Me too. Luckily I can hitch a ride on any computer.
  • User: That’s very funny.
  • SocialBot: The biggest challenge isn’t technology, it’s funding. It will cost $500 billion to send humans to Mars.
Your SocialBot will continue turn-by-turn interaction, starting with a topic the user asked for, until the user chooses to stop. Like an everyday human conversation, the interaction may shift naturally to related topics, as in the above example, but the conversation should remain coherent, relevant, and engaging. Your SocialBot may suggest topics to keep the conversation flowing. The goal is to keep the conversation from deteriorating to the point where the user loses interest.
How will I build my SocialBot?
You will use the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) to build an Alexa skill, hosted on AWS Lambda, that will create the end-to-end conversational experience for a user. Using the provided APIs, your skill will receive as input the text of the user’s utterance, and produce as output a text sentence that will be spoken to the user. You do not need to tackle ASR (automatic speech recognition) or TTS (text to speech). You will also be provided with the CoBot Toolkit (a conversational bot toolkit), a software development kit that works with ASK and was built specifically for Alexa Prize teams to reduce the involved engineering in setting up a SocialBot and allow teams to focus on the science.


Your skill will need to determine an appropriate response at each turn of the conversation. It will also need to keep up with current news and events using the provided data sources. You may use additional data sources or libraries if you wish, subject to the terms described in the Official Rules.
What is the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK)?
The Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) is a collection of free, self-service APIs, tools, documentation, and code samples that make it fast and easy for you to add skills to Alexa. Your team will use ASK to build, deploy, and test a SocialBot that is capable of conversing with millions of Alexa users.
Competition details
What is the goal of the challenge?
The goal of the SocialBot Grand challenge is to advance several areas of conversational AI including natural language understanding (NLU), context modeling, dialog management, commonsense reasoning, natural language generation (NLG), and knowledge acquisition. The grand challenge objective is to create a SocialBot that converses coherently and engagingly with humans on popular topics for 20 minutes while achieving a user rating of at least 4.0/5.0.
How will winners be selected?
Through various phases of the competition, SocialBots will be evaluated based on feedback from Alexa users and assessment by Amazon.


Following the initial feedback period, SocialBots that have been certified and published will be evaluated on criteria such as the average interaction rating, uptime requirements, and ability to filter offensive content in order to advance to the Semifinals Interaction Period.



During the semifinals interaction period, Alexa customers will evaluate the semifinalist SocialBots. The two SocialBots with the highest Semifinals Interaction Rating Average and up to three more SocialBots selected by Amazon will advance to the finals.



Teams that advance to and complete the Semifinals Interaction Period, regardless of whether they advanced to the Finals Event, will be eligible to compete for Scientific Invention and Innovation Prizes based on the level of scientific invention and innovation demonstrated by each Entrant Team throughout the Competition.



The Teams whose SocialBots attain the three highest Composite Scores during the finals event will be the winners of the Overall Performance Prizes.
Will this competition be judged like a Turing Test?
No. The goal of the Alexa Prize is to create SocialBots that engage in interesting, human-like conversations, not to make them indistinguishable from a human when compared side-by-side. While the SocialBots built for the Alexa Prize will be human-like in some respects, they will be very different in others, and could easily reveal themselves in a Turing Test. For example, SocialBots may have ready access to much more information than a human. Asking the SocialBots to act like a human could diminish the customer experience and hinder the efforts of the participants to build the best SocialBot to further conversational AI.
When and where is the finals event?
The finals event will be held in July 2023 at a location to be determined, with a science invention and innovation presentation review to follow. The competition results will be announced in August 2023.
Can we use other funding to help us participate in this challenge?
Yes, you may use other funding to support your team, subject to the terms described in the Official Rules. External funding must be disclosed to Amazon.
Will Alexa customers be able to engage with our SocialBot?
Your team will be required to submit its SocialBot for certification and publication by the Amazon Alexa team. After certification, you will enter the Internal Amazon Beta Period, where Amazon employees will test your SocialBot and provide feedback. After the Internal Amazon Beta Period, we will allow Alexa users to try your SocialBot and provide feedback to you. Amazon may impose requirements that the SocialBots must meet before they will be made available to Alexa users. Such requirements may include, among other things, a minimum average customer rating, uptime requirements, or the ability to consistently filter offensive content.
Which Alexa users will be able to interact with the SocialBots, and what languages must they support?
SocialBots will be made available to Alexa users in the United States or who select the United States as their preferred marketplace. Your team must build its SocialBot using U.S. English.
Will we publish our research from the Alexa Prize?
Yes. Publishing research papers as an outcome of your work on Alexa Prize is required for all teams participating in the competition, although teams may not publish Amazon confidential information, as described in the Official Rules. The Alexa Prize requires all teams to submit a technical paper for the Alexa Prize proceedings. Your SocialBot will not be selected for the finals if your team does not submit a technical paper for Alexa Prize proceedings. Papers will be published online at the end of the competition and made publicly available.

Teams may also publish research papers in third-party publications and conferences, as long as all papers are provided to Amazon for review at least two weeks before the submission deadlines and no research papers are published before the Alexa Prize proceedings are published, unless Amazon approves otherwise in writing.
Who will own the intellectual property rights in my submission?
You will retain ownership over your SocialBot. Amazon will have a non-exclusive license to any technology or software you develop in connection with the competition. See the Official Rules for details.
Eligibility
Who can apply to participate?
The Alexa Prize is open to full-time students enrolled in an accredited university, with the exception of universities in Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Sudan, the region of Crimea, and where prohibited by law (see Official Rules). Proof of enrollment will be required to participate.
Can I participate if I don’t attend a university?
No. The Alexa Prize is open only to full-time enrolled university students.
Do I need to be enrolled in a university program throughout my participation in the competition?
All participating team members must remain full-time students in good standing at their university while participating in the competition.
Do I need to be a certain age?
Participants must be at or above the age of majority in the country, state, province, or jurisdiction of residence at the time of entry.
Can I enroll if a family member is an Amazon employee?
Immediate family members and household members of Amazon employees, directors, and contractors are not eligible to participate. See Official Rules for additional restrictions.
Teams
How many teams will be selected to participate?
All applications will be reviewed and evaluated by Amazon. Up to ten teams will be selected and sponsored by Amazon. All teams will receive a $250,000 grant intended to support two full-time students and a month of faculty time, free Alexa devices, and free AWS hosting including access to CPU and GPU based machines, SQL and NoSQL databases, and object storage. See Official Rules for details.
How many team members can our team have?
There is no minimum or maximum number of team members. All team members must be enrolled in their university throughout their participation. All teams will receive a $250,000 grant regardless of how many members are on the team. We recommend a team with four to six students with diverse fields of study or areas of expertise.
Can students from different universities be on the same team?
No. Teams must be comprised of students attending the same university.
Can one university have more than one team?
Yes, universities may have more than one team. Multiple teams cannot have the same faculty advisor.
Can I participate on two separate teams?
No. You can only be a part of one team for the duration of the competition.
Can undergraduate and graduate students work together?
Yes, teams may be comprised of undergraduate and graduate students.
Do I need a faculty advisor?
All teams must nominate a faculty advisor and include the faculty advisor’s consent in the applications.
What is the role of the faculty advisor?
Faculty advisors will advise students on technical directions and be a sounding board for new ideas, similar to a graduate school advisor. They will also act as the official representative from the university for this competition.
Can we add or remove team members during the competition?
During the competition, there will be a period of time during which faculty advisors may request to remove or add members to the team, subject to approval by Amazon. See Official Rules for details.
Can we discuss our SocialBot with faculty or students who aren’t on our team?
Only team members may work on their SocialBots. However, the faculty advisor and other students and faculty members at your university may provide support and advice to your team and may co-author technical publications and research papers.
Application process
How do we apply?
Begin the application via YouNoodle.
What do we need to apply?
Once you have selected your team members, team leader, and faculty sponsor, you are ready to begin the application process.
Do all team members have to apply?
Each team must have a team lead, who should submit only one application on behalf of the whole team. Your application must include all of your team members’ information.
Is there an application fee?
There is no application fee.
How will teams be selected to participate?
All applications will be reviewed. Teams will be selected by Amazon based on the following criteria: (1) the potential scientific contribution to the field; (2) the technical merit of the approach; (3) the novelty of the idea; and (4) an assessment of the team’s ability to execute against their plan. Please be sure to provide enough detail in your application to enable evaluation of your proposal.
Prizes
What are the prizes for winning the competition?
Overall Performance Prize: For the three teams that build the SocialBot with the highest overall performance, the first-place team will win $250,000, the second-place team will win $50,000, and the third-place team will win $25,000. These prizes will be paid directly to the students on each winning team.


Scientific Invention and Innovation Prize: For the three teams that demonstrate the most scientific invention and innovation throughout the competition, the first-place team will win $250,000, the second-place team will win $50,000, and the third-place team will win $25,000. These prizes will be paid directly to the students on each winning team.



Grand Prize: If and only if the SocialBot of the team that wins the first-place Overall Performance Prize also achieves the grand challenge of conversing coherently and engagingly with humans for 20 minutes in at least two-thirds of its conversations at the finals event and achieves a 4.0 or higher composite score, that team’s university will be awarded a $1 million research grant.



See Official Rules for details.
Do we get a stipend and devices to participate in the Alexa Prize?
Up to ten teams will be sponsored to participate in the competition. Each sponsored team’s university will receive a $250,000 research grant to help fund the team’s participation.


The sponsorship includes Alexa-enabled devices, free AWS services to support the development of the team’s SocialBot, and support from the Alexa Prize team.
How can the grant be spent?
The grant is intended to support two full-time students for the duration of the competition and one month of the faculty advisor’s salary. No more than 35% of the research grant may be allocated to administrative fees. If your team would like to use the funds in another manner, your faculty advisor must receive approval from Amazon before doing so.
How will the prizes be distributed among a team?
Each Overall Performance Prize and the Scientific Invention and Innovation Prize will be distributed equally among the members of each winning team.
Timeline
What are the key milestones of the competition?
Teams must submit their applications by October 5, 2022. Teams selected to participate in the competition will be notified in October of November 2022. The competition will run from about November 2022 through August 2023. See Official Rules for details.

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Satellite GNC Engineer, Amazon Leo
US, WA, Redmond
Amazon Leo is building a constellation of thousands of low Earth orbit satellites. It will bring fast, reliable internet to customers beyond the reach of existing networks. On the Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) team, you will design the algorithms, simulations and onboard autonomy that keep every satellite precisely pointed and stable. Your work lets the payload serve customers on the ground, and it keeps the fleet flying safely. This is satellite GNC at constellation scale. The constellation is launching and growing today, so you will see your work go from concept to orbit, and then fly on many satellites. In this role, you will: - Take your GNC algorithms from concept to orbit, and stay with them through integration, test and on-orbit operations. - Write the production C++ flight code for your own algorithms. The code that flies is the code you write. - Solve hard problems in precise pointing, payload cueing and fleet autonomy. - Work across design, simulation, test and flight operations, not a narrow slice of the lifecycle. **Export Control Requirement:** Due to applicable export control laws and regulations, candidates must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (i.e., current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum. Key job responsibilities - Design and analyze algorithms for state estimation, attitude determination and control, precise pointing and payload cueing against demanding performance requirements. - Implement these algorithms in production C++ flight software. Our GNC engineers own their algorithms all the way into flight, and partner with our embedded software engineers to integrate and test them. - Write concepts of operations for each phase of a satellite's life, from launch and orbit raising to service and deorbit, including failures and recovery. Balance what the payload needs against momentum, power, thermal and ground-contact limits. - Develop momentum management strategies with reaction wheels and magnetic torquers. Help select, size and place the GNC sensors and actuators for future satellites, and design the algorithms that use them. These include star trackers, magnetometers, sun sensors, IMUs and GNSS receivers. - Develop onboard autonomy, including Fault Detection, Isolation and Recovery (FDIR), so that the fleet operates safely at scale with minimal ground intervention. - Build and validate satellite and constellation models and simulations at several levels of fidelity, including 6-DOF simulation and Monte Carlo analysis. Verify closed-loop performance in hardware-in-the-loop (HITL) tests. - Support component environmental tests, functional and performance checkout, and subsystem and satellite integration in our labs. - Analyze telemetry from the whole fleet. Build the metrics, dashboards and tools that track pointing performance and payload operations time as the constellation grows, and use them to improve the fleet. - Operate the GNC system on orbit and take part in the team's on-call rotation. Review fleet data, support maneuvers, and resolve anomalies when on-orbit behavior differs from the ground model. - Review designs and code with the team, and document your algorithms, analyses and results clearly. A day in the life This role covers a wide range of problems across the spacecraft and the network. You will derive and prototype estimation and control algorithms, and then turn them into production flight code. You will prove them in 6-DOF and Monte Carlo simulation and in hardware-in-the-loop tests in the lab. You will support satellite integration. When a satellite does not behave as the ground model predicted, you will dig into fleet telemetry, find the cause and drive the fix. You will own each problem end to end, with the focus to go deep on it. GNC is at the center of safe flight, so you will work across the whole program. The payload, power, thermal and operations teams all depend on GNC, and you will balance their needs against the pointing and momentum budgets. You will partner closely with avionics, flight software and embedded software engineers to make your algorithms run reliably on the spacecraft. You will help the mechanical teams shape the next generation of satellite hardware, from reaction wheels to star trackers. As satellites move from design through manufacturing into orbit, you will work with systems engineering and Assembly, Integration and Test. The problems are hard: tight pointing requirements, a large constellation to keep flying safely, and the chance to invent capabilities that do not exist yet. Constant work with other teams makes this a place where you keep learning and growing. About the team You will join the Satellite Attitude Determination and Control team. We own GNC for our satellites end to end: algorithm design, flight software, lab integration, and flight operations of our own satellites on orbit. Our engineers bring deep experience from many satellite programs and other flight vehicles, with real strength in both our mission and the core GNC disciplines. We design, prototype, test, iterate and learn together. Because GNC is central to safe flight, we drive the concepts of operations and many of the system-level analyses on the program. We also have a lot of freedom. We trust our engineers to choose their own tools and approaches for the problems they face, and to own the results. If you want the autonomy to solve hard problems your way, with a team of strong engineers, you will feel at home here.
Senior Satellite GNC Engineer, Amazon Leo
US, WA, Redmond
Amazon Leo is building a constellation of thousands of low Earth orbit satellites. It will bring fast, reliable internet to customers beyond the reach of existing networks. On the Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) team, you will design the algorithms, simulations and onboard autonomy that keep every satellite precisely pointed and stable. Your work lets the payload serve customers on the ground, and it keeps the fleet flying safely. This is satellite GNC at constellation scale. The constellation is launching and growing today, so you will see your work go from concept to orbit, and then fly on many satellites. In this role, you will: - Take your GNC algorithms from concept to orbit, and stay with them through integration, test and on-orbit operations. - Write the production C++ flight code for your own algorithms. The code that flies is the code you write. - Solve hard problems in precise pointing, payload cueing and fleet autonomy. - Work across design, simulation, test and flight operations, not a narrow slice of the lifecycle. **Export Control Requirement:** Due to applicable export control laws and regulations, candidates must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (i.e., current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum. Key job responsibilities - Design and analyze algorithms for state estimation, attitude determination and control, precise pointing and payload cueing against demanding performance requirements. - Implement these algorithms in production C++ flight software. Our GNC engineers own their algorithms all the way into flight, and partner with our embedded software engineers to integrate and test them. - Write concepts of operations for each phase of a satellite's life, from launch and orbit raising to service and deorbit, including failures and recovery. Balance what the payload needs against momentum, power, thermal and ground-contact limits. - Develop momentum management strategies with reaction wheels and magnetic torquers. Help select, size and place the GNC sensors and actuators for future satellites, and design the algorithms that use them. These include star trackers, magnetometers, sun sensors, IMUs and GNSS receivers. - Develop onboard autonomy, including Fault Detection, Isolation and Recovery (FDIR), so that the fleet operates safely at scale with minimal ground intervention. - Build and validate satellite and constellation models and simulations at several levels of fidelity, including 6-DOF simulation and Monte Carlo analysis. Verify closed-loop performance in hardware-in-the-loop (HITL) tests. - Support component environmental tests, functional and performance checkout, and subsystem and satellite integration in our labs. - Analyze telemetry from the whole fleet. Build the metrics, dashboards and tools that track pointing performance and payload operations time as the constellation grows, and use them to improve the fleet. - Operate the GNC system on orbit and take part in the team's on-call rotation. Review fleet data, support maneuvers, and resolve anomalies when on-orbit behavior differs from the ground model. - Review designs and code with the team, and document your algorithms, analyses and results clearly. A day in the life This role covers a wide range of problems across the spacecraft and the network. You will derive and prototype estimation and control algorithms, and then turn them into production flight code. You will prove them in 6-DOF and Monte Carlo simulation and in hardware-in-the-loop tests in the lab. You will support satellite integration. When a satellite does not behave as the ground model predicted, you will dig into fleet telemetry, find the cause and drive the fix. You will own each problem end to end, with the focus to go deep on it. GNC is at the center of safe flight, so you will work across the whole program. The payload, power, thermal and operations teams all depend on GNC, and you will balance their needs against the pointing and momentum budgets. You will partner closely with avionics, flight software and embedded software engineers to make your algorithms run reliably on the spacecraft. You will help the mechanical teams shape the next generation of satellite hardware, from reaction wheels to star trackers. As satellites move from design through manufacturing into orbit, you will work with systems engineering and Assembly, Integration and Test. The problems are hard: tight pointing requirements, a large constellation to keep flying safely, and the chance to invent capabilities that do not exist yet. Constant work with other teams makes this a place where you keep learning and growing. About the team You will join the Satellite Attitude Determination and Control team. We own GNC for our satellites end to end: algorithm design, flight software, lab integration, and flight operations of our own satellites on orbit. Our engineers bring deep experience from many satellite programs and other flight vehicles, with real strength in both our mission and the core GNC disciplines. We design, prototype, test, iterate and learn together. Because GNC is central to safe flight, we drive the concepts of operations and many of the system-level analyses on the program. We also have a lot of freedom. We trust our engineers to choose their own tools and approaches for the problems they face, and to own the results. If you want the autonomy to solve hard problems your way, with a team of strong engineers, you will feel at home here.
Applied Scientist, PXT Central Science
US, CA, San Francisco
The Central Science Team within Amazon’s People Experience and Technology org (PXTCS) uses economics, behavioral science, statistics, and machine learning to proactively identify mechanisms and process improvements which simultaneously improve Amazon and the lives, well-being, and the value of work to Amazonians. We are an interdisciplinary team, which combines the talents of science and engineering to develop and deliver solutions that measurably achieve this goal. We are looking for an Applied Scientist to build production machine learning solutions that improve employee experiences and inform workforce decisions. You will work on problems spanning predictive modeling, natural language processing, recommendation systems, personalization, generative AI, and causal evaluation. These solutions will predict workforce outcomes, identify individual and organizational needs, recommend targeted actions, and measure the causal impact of programs, products, and policies across diverse employee populations and business contexts. As an Applied Scientist, you will develop models and algorithms from prototype through production. You will collaborate with other scientists and economists to combine machine learning with causal inference and experimentation, allowing teams to understand both what is likely to happen and which actions will improve outcomes. You will also work with product managers, engineers, and business partners to translate business needs into technical solutions and communicate methods and results to technical and nontechnical audiences. Key job responsibilities • Design, develop, and deploy machine learning solutions in production environments. • Develop solutions using techniques that include predictive modeling, deep learning, natural language processing, recommendation systems, personalization, and generative AI. • Build models that predict workforce outcomes, identify employee and organizational needs, and recommend targeted actions. • Partner with economists and other scientists to design causal evaluations and experimental frameworks that measure the impact of programs, products, and policies. • Combine predictive models with causal estimates to help business partners identify effective actions and make evidence-based decisions. • Collaborate with product managers, engineers, and business partners to translate business requirements into modeling approaches and contribute to technical design and roadmap decisions. • Evaluate model accuracy, performance, calibration, and limitations, and identify opportunities for improvement. • Communicate technical concepts, methods, results, and recommendations to technical peers and business partners. A day in the life • Analyze data to investigate model performance or understand an unexpected result from a causal evaluation. • Brainstorm modeling and evaluation approaches with applied scientists and economists on the team. • Develop and test model features, recommendation methods, or generative AI applications. • Design or analyze experiments and observational studies to estimate the causal impact of programs, products, or policies. • Run simulations, offline evaluations, or backtests to assess model performance. • Meet with product, engineering, and business partners to review requirements, data, designs, and implementation decisions. • Review code changes or technical design documents from scientists and engineers. • Write and present documents covering methods, results, limitations, and recommendations. About the team The People eXperience and Technology Central Science Team (PXTCS) uses economics, behavioral science, statistics, and machine learning to proactively identify mechanisms and process improvements which simultaneously improve Amazon and the lives, wellbeing, and the value of work to Amazonians. We are an interdisciplinary team that combines the talents of science and engineering to develop and deliver solutions that measurably achieve this goal.
Applied Scientist I, Tablet Product Software
US, WA, Seattle
Are you excited to play a strategic role in defining the customer experience on Tablets? Come join a dynamic, customer-obsessed, world-class science team to completely reshape the customer experience on our tablets. Key job responsibilities Using Amazon’s large-scale computing resources, you will design and deploy state-of-the-art recommendation models. You will ask research questions about customer behavior, design state-of-the-art models that help customers discover content, and deploy these models to production alongside other engineers. You will participate in the Amazon ML community and mentor other engineers with a strong interest in and knowledge of ML and generative AI. Your work will directly benefit customers! A day in the life We are looking for a passionate, hard-working, and talented Applied Scientist who has experience developing state-of-the-art models and deploying them to production. You will have an opportunity to make an enormous impact on the design, architecture, and implementation of products used everyday by real customers! About the team The Alexa Tablet team is a world-class team that delivers high-quality, innovative products that are loved by our customers. Our team focuses on spinning many of Amazon’s flywheels with bar-raising mobile experiences on our tablets. Over the last 12 years, we have built 4.0+ star rated products, and we continue to look for ways to scale our business. Join us as we continue our ambitious journey which will give you the opportunity to deliver disruptive products with global impact.
Data Scientist, EU Prime and Marketing Analytics & Science (PRIMAS)
IN, KA, Bengaluru
Are you passionate about giving customers the richest, most inspiring experience in their shopping journey? Do you like to dive deep to understand how customer-centric solutions drive measurable results? Do you enjoy working closely with the business and software engineers to design rigorous experiments, build the data infrastructure behind them, and translate results into decisions? You are in the right place! Come join our Prime & Marketing Analytics and Science (PRIMAS) team, where your work will directly impact millions of customers. The EU Marketing & Prime organization is looking for a Data Scientist to join the PRIMAS team. This role sits at the intersection of applied statistics and large-scale analytics — you'll design experiments and causal models, and also own the data pipelines, metrics, and reporting infrastructure that make those results usable across the business. The PRIMAS team provides a comprehensive understanding of customer segments, affinities, and lifetime value. We use data science tools and advanced statistical techniques to study customer purchase and engagement behaviors, and generate actionable insights on where, when, and how we deliver products and programs to customers. We help increase customer engagement, sales, and marketing efficiency, and our systems are built entirely in-house on automated large-scale analytics infrastructure. You will design, launch, and measure experiments across marketing channels (SEM/SEO, Affiliates, Display, Social, Mobile, Email, Onsite, etc.), engagement products, and customer segments. You will improve our understanding of customer behavior, run rigorous power and minimum detectable effect (MDE) analyses to size experiments correctly, and build the causal and conversion models that value and target our marketing — then build the pipelines and dashboards that keep those signals flowing reliably to stakeholders and downstream systems. You will work at the forefront of consumer analytics, tackling some of the hardest measurement problems in the industry alongside strong scientists, statisticians, and software engineers. Key job responsibilities 1. Design and implement scalable, statistically rigorous experiments (A/B, geo, holdout, quasi-experiments) to measure marketing incrementality across channels. 2. Perform power analysis and minimum detectable effect (MDE) calculations to determine experiment sample sizes, durations, and design trade-offs before launch. 3. Build causal and treatment-effect models that produce conversion and valuation signals consumed by downstream bidding and budgeting systems. 4. Building the ETL, metric definitions, and datasets that make results scalable, extensible, and repeatable rather than one-off analyses. 5. Develop measurement frameworks that quantify the true, platform-independent contribution of marketing over time, and build the dashboards and reporting that keep those metrics visible to the business. 6. Apply statistical, mathematical, and machine learning techniques to solve ambiguous business problems where the right approach isn't obvious. 7. Analyze experiment results for validity — inspecting distributions, checking for sample ratio mismatch, exploring covariate balance, and tracking down the source of anomalies. 8. Communicate experiment design, results, and trade-offs clearly to business and leadership audiences, including inputs into business reviews, and influence decisions and technical direction across teams. 9. Establish scalable, repeatable processes and best practices for experiment design, data modeling, and analysis.
Applied Scientist II, Detail Page
IN, KA, Bengaluru
Amazon.com’s Product Detail Page team is looking for talented, motivated and passionate applied scientist to be part of the design and development of a highly scalable multi-tiered shopping application to provide the best possible online shopping experience for Amazon customers world-wide. Our team is comprised of talented applied scientists, developers, testers, program managers, designers and product managers tasked with the singular goal to create THE world's best buying experience. Scientists on this team develop the next-generation technologies and experiences that change how millions interact and shop online. To provide the best possible online shopping at the scale of the web requires ideas from every area of computer science, including distributed computing, large-scale system design, machine learning, natural language processing, data compression and user interface design; the list goes on and is growing every day. We need our scientists to be versatile and always eager to tackle new problems as we continue to push technology forward. Our team leverages sophisticated econometric, machine learning, and big data technologies to help customers to discover the right products at the right prices from millions of trusted sellers billions of times a day. If you are looking for a career-defining opportunity on one of the most customer centric and business impacting teams within Amazon, we’d love to hear from you. We are looking for an Applied Scientist to help build the next generation of Detail Page optimization algorithms. These new set of algorithms will incorporate the continually changing preferences of our customers and continue to scale with numerous new programs that Amazon is introducing for our customers. You will work with multiple Amazon businesses and programs to identify big business opportunities and propose new business features and technical systems to improve customer experience on Amazon Detail Page, Search Page and many other widgets throughout the website. You will be responsible for the quality of algorithm design and will get the opportunity to present your ideas and share results of your deliverables with Amazon executives on a frequent basis. You will get an opportunity to work with senior scientists to define and enforce broad, company-wide technical standards in optimization techniques, statistical modeling and simulation techniques, and/or data analytics.
Applied Scientist II (AMZ1513176)
US, WA, Seattle
Applied Scientist II (AMZ1513176) (Multiple Positions), Amazon Data Services, Inc., Seattle, WA. Participate in the design, development, evaluation, deployment and updating of data-driven models and analytical solutions for machine learning (ML) and/or natural language (NL) applications. Develop and/or apply statistical modeling techniques (e.g. Bayesian models and deep neural networks), optimization methods, and other ML techniques to different applications in business and engineering. Routinely build and deploy ML models on available data. Research and implement novel ML and statistical approaches to add value to the business. Mentor junior engineers and scientists. (AMZ1513176) 40 hrs/week, Mon-Fri, 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Salary Range: $163,617 - $193,200/yr. Amazon.com is an Equal Opportunity – Affirmative Action Employer – Minority/Female/Disability/Veteran/Gender Identity/Sexual Orientation MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS: Master's degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, or a related field and (1) one year of research or work experience in the job offered, or as a Research Scientist, Research Assistant, Software Engineer, or a related occupation. Employer will accept a Bachelor's degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, or a related field and (5) five years of research or work experience in a related occupation as equivalent to the Master's degree and one year of research or work experience. Must have (1) one year of research or work experience in the following skill(s): programming in Java, C++, Python, or equivalent programming language; and conducting the analysis and development of various supervised and unsupervised machine learning models for moderately complex projects in business, science, or engineering. Employer will accept any suitable combination of education, training or experience. Multiple Positions Available. Amazon is a total compensation company. Depending 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, visit: https://www.aboutamazon.com/workplace/employee-benefits.#0000
Research Scientist II, TechOps
US, WA, Seattle
nnovators wanted! Are you an entrepreneur? A builder? A dreamer? This role is part of an Amazon Special Projects team that takes the company’s Think Big leadership principle to the extreme. We focus on creating entirely new products and services with a goal of positively impacting the lives of our customers. No industries or subject areas are out of bounds. If you’re interested in innovating at scale to address big challenges in the world, this is the team for you. Here at Amazon, we embrace our differences. We are committed to furthering our culture of inclusion. We have thirteen employee-led affinity groups, reaching 40,000 employees in over 190 chapters globally. We are constantly learning through programs that are local, regional, and global. Amazon’s culture of inclusion is reinforced within our 16 Leadership Principles, which remind team members to seek diverse perspectives, learn and be curious, and earn trust. Our team highly values work-life balance, mentorship and career growth. We believe striking the right balance between your personal and professional life is critical to life-long happiness and fulfillment. We care about your career growth and strive to assign projects and offer training that will challenge you to become your best.
Data Scientist I, NEST
US, WA, Bellevue
Are you curious about turning complex data into actionable insights that shape how millions of customers experience Amazon? Do you enjoy building analytical models, testing hypotheses, and seeing your work drive real business decisions? We are looking for a Data Scientist to join our team at Amazon. In this role, you will apply statistical techniques, machine learning, and data analysis to solve well-defined business problems and deliver measurable improvements. You will work with large-scale datasets from multiple sources, build and validate models, and create metrics that quantify impact. This is an opportunity for a self-starter who is comfortable with ambiguity in data, thrives on collaboration with science and engineering partners, and is eager to grow their craft in a fast-paced environment. Key job responsibilities - Use statistical methods, machine learning algorithms, and data analysis techniques to translate well-defined business problems into data science solutions that improve processes and systems. - Gather, clean, and integrate large datasets from multiple sources to build and validate models, ensuring data integrity and adherence to best practices throughout the pipeline. - Design and deliver metrics, visualizations, and reports that compare results against benchmarks and original project goals, enabling clear and informed decision-making for stakeholders. - Collaborate with business, science, and engineering teams to understand customer needs, identify opportunities, and develop scalable analytical solutions using tools such as Python, R, or SQL. - Evaluate opportunities to integrate generative artificial intelligence tools into workflows, refining outputs and applying responsible practices to augment productivity and solution quality. About the team Our team is focused on using data science to help Amazon make smarter, faster decisions that benefit customers. We build analytical models and machine learning solutions that operate at scale, and we value rigorous methodology paired with clear communication. You will join a collaborative group of scientists and engineers who are passionate about learning from one another and pushing the boundaries of what data can do. If you are excited about growing your career in an inclusive, supportive environment where your contributions have tangible impact, we would love to hear from you.
Applied Scientist Intern - VLA and DATA, RIVR
CH, Zurich
Are you a MS or PhD student interested in a 2026 Applied Science Internship in the field of Robotics? Do you enjoy diving deep into hard technical problems and coming up with solutions that enable successful products that improve the lives of people in a meaningful way? If this describes you, come join our research teams at Amazon. Key job responsibilities As an Applied Science Intern, you will have access to large datasets with billions of images and video to build large-scale machine learning systems. Additionally, you will analyze and model terabytes of text, images, and other types of data to solve real-world problems and translate business and functional requirements into quick prototypes or proofs of concept. We are looking for scientists capable of using a variety of domain expertise combined with machine learning and statistical techniques to invent, design, evangelize, and implement state-of-the-art solutions for never-before-solved problems.
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