Social
Automated reasoning

A gentle introduction to automated reasoning

Meet Amazon Science’s newest research area.

By Byron Cook
December 1, 2021
18 min read
Share

This week, Amazon Science added automated reasoning to its list of research areas. We made this change because of the impact that automated reasoning is having here at Amazon. For example, Amazon Web Services’ customers now have direct access to automated-reasoning-based features such as IAM Access Analyzer, S3 Block Public Access, or VPC Reachability Analyzer. We also see Amazon development teams integrating automated-reasoning tools into their development processes, raising the bar on the security, durability, availability, and quality of our products.

The goal of this article is to provide a gentle introduction to automated reasoning for the industry professional who knows nothing about the area but is curious to learn more. All you will need to make sense of this article is to be able to read a few small C and Python code fragments. I will refer to a few specialist concepts along the way, but only with the goal of introducing them in an informal manner. I close with links to some of our favorite publicly available tools, videos, books, and articles for those looking to go more in-depth.

Let’s start with a simple example. Consider the following C function:

bool f(unsigned int x, unsigned int y) {
   return (x+y == y+x);
}



        
Take a few moments to answer the question “Could f ever return false?” This is not a trick question: I’ve purposefully used a simple example to make a point.
To check the answer with exhaustive testing, we could try executing the following doubly nested test loop, which calls f on all possible pairs of values of the type unsigned int:

            

    
#include<stdio.h>
#include<stdbool.h>
#include<limits.h>

bool f(unsigned int x, unsigned int y) {
   return (x+y == y+x);
}

void main() {
   for (unsigned int x=0;1;x++) {
      for (unsigned int y=0;1;y++) {
         if (!f(x,y)) printf("Error!\n");
         if (y==UINT_MAX) break;
      }
      if (x==UINT_MAX) break;
   }
}



        
Unfortunately, even on modern hardware, this doubly nested loop will run for a very long time. I compiled it and ran it on a 2.6 GHz Intel processor for over 48 hours before giving up.
Why does testing take so long? Because UINT_MAX is typically 4,294,967,295, there are 18,446,744,065,119,617,025 separate f calls to consider. On my 2.6 GHz machine, the compiled test loop called f approximately 430 million times a second. But to test all 18 quintillion cases at this performance, we would need over 1,360 years.
When we show the above code to industry professionals, they almost immediately work out that f can't return false as long as the underlying compiler/interpreter and hardware are correct. How do they do that? They reason about it. They remember from their school days that x + y can be rewritten as y + x and conclude that f always returns true.

            

    
        






    
    

        
            
Re:Invent 2021 keynote address by Peter DeSantis, senior vice president for utility computing at Amazon Web Services

        
        
            
Skip to 15:49 for a discussion of Amazon Web Services' work on automated reasoning.

        
    



        
An automated reasoning tool does this work for us: it attempts to answer questions about a program (or a logic formula) by using known techniques from mathematics. In this case, the tool would use algebra to deduce that x + y == y + x can be replaced with the simple expression true.
Automated-reasoning tools can be incredibly fast, even when the domains are infinite (e.g., unbounded mathematical integers rather than finite C ints). Unfortunately, the tools may answer “Don’t know” in some instances. We'll see a famous example of that below.
The science of automated reasoning is essentially focused on driving the frequency of these “Don’t know” answers down as far as possible: the less often the tools report "Don't know" (or time out while trying), the more useful they are.
Today’s tools are able to give answers for programs and queries where yesterday’s tools could not. Tomorrow’s tools will be even more powerful. We are seeing rapid progress in this field, which is why at Amazon, we are increasingly getting so much value from it. In fact, we see automated reasoning forming its own Amazon-style virtuous cycle, where more input problems to our tools drive improvements to the tools, which encourages more use of the tools.
A slightly more complex example. Now that we know the rough outlines of what automated reasoning is, the next small example gives a slightly more realistic taste of the sort of complexity that the tools are managing for us.

            

    
void g(int x, int y) {
   if (y > 0)
      while (x > y)
         x = x - y;
}



        
Or, alternatively, consider a similar Python program over unbounded integers:

            

    
def g(x, y):
   assert isinstance(x, int) and isinstance(y, int)
   if y > 0:
      while x > y:
         x = x - y



        
Try to answer this question: “Does g always eventually return control back to its caller?”
When we show this program to industry professionals, they usually figure out the right answer quickly. A few, especially those who are aware of results in theoretical computer science, sometimes mistakenly think that we can't answer this question, with the rationale “This is an example of the halting problem, which has been proved insoluble”. In fact, we can reason about the halting behavior for specific programs, including this one. We’ll talk more about that later.
Here’s the reasoning that most industry professionals use when looking at this problem:
  1. In the case where y is not positive, execution jumps to the end of the function g. That’s the easy case.
  2. If, in every iteration of the loop, the value of the variable x decreases, then eventually, the loop condition x > y will fail, and the end of g will be reached.
  3. The value of x always decreases only if y is always positive, because only then does the update to x (i.e., x = x - y) decrease x. But y’s positivity is established by the conditional expression, so x always decreases.
The experienced programmer will usually worry about underflow in the x = x - y command of the C program but will then notice that x > y before the update to x and thus cannot underflow.
If you carried out the three steps above yourself, you now have a very intuitive view of the type of thinking an automated-reasoning tool is performing on our behalf when reasoning about a computer program. There are many nitty-gritty details that the tools have to face (e.g., heaps, stacks, strings, pointer arithmetic, recursion, concurrency, callbacks, etc.), but there’s also decades of research papers on techniques for handling these and other topics, along with various practical tools that put these ideas to work.

            

    

        
    
        Policy-code.gif
    


        

        
    


    
        
Automated reasoning can be applied to both policies (top) and code (bottom). In both cases, an essential step is reasoning about what's always true.

    


        
The main takeaway is that automated-reasoning tools are usually working through the three steps above on our behalf: Item 1 is reasoning about the program’s control structure. Item 2 is reasoning about what is eventually true within the program. Item 3 is reasoning about what is always true in the program.
Note that configuration artifacts such as AWS resource policies, VPC network descriptions, or even makefiles can be thought of as code. This viewpoint allows us to use the same techniques we use to reason about C or Python code to answer questions about the interpretation of configurations. It’s this insight that gives us tools like IAM Access Analyzer or VPC Reachability Analyzer.
An end to testing?
As we saw above when looking at f and g, automated reasoning can be dramatically faster than exhaustive testing. With tools available today, we can show properties of f or g in milliseconds, rather than waiting lifetimes with exhaustive testing.
Can we throw away our testing tools now and just move to automated reasoning? Not quite. Yes, we can dramatically reduce our dependency on testing, but we will not be completely eliminating it any time soon, if ever. Consider our first example:

            

    
bool f(unsigned int x, unsigned int y) {
   return (x + y == y + x);
}



        
Recall the worry that a buggy compiler or microprocessor could in fact cause an executable program constructed from this source code to return false. We might also need to worry about the language runtime. For example, the C math library or the Python garbage collector might have bugs that cause a program to misbehave.
What’s interesting about testing, and something we often forget, is that it’s doing much more than just telling us about the C or Python source code. It’s also testing the compiler, the runtime, the interpreter, the microprocessor, etc. A test failure could be rooted in any of those tools in the stack.
Automated reasoning, in contrast, is usually applied to just one layer of that stack — the source code itself, or sometimes the compiler or the microprocessor. What we find so valuable about reasoning is it allows us to clearly define both what we do know and what we do not know about the layer under inspection.
Furthermore, the models of the surrounding environment (e.g., the compiler or the procedure calling our procedure) used by the automated-reasoning tool make our assumptions very precise. Separating the layers of the computational stack helps make better use of our time, energy, and money and the capabilities of the tools today and tomorrow.
Unfortunately, we will almost always need to make assumptions about something when using automated reasoning — for example, the principles of physics that govern our silicon chips. Thus, testing will never be fully replaced. We will want to perform end-to-end testing to try and validate our assumptions as best we can.
An impossible program
I previously mentioned that automated-reasoning tools sometimes return “Don’t know” rather than “yes” or “no”. They also sometimes run forever (or time out), thus never returning an answer. Let’s look at the famous "halting problem" program, in which we know tools cannot return “yes” or “no”.
Imagine that we have an automated-reasoning API, called terminates, that returns “yes” if a C function always terminates or “no” when the function could execute forever. As an example, we could build such an API using the tool described here (shameless self-promotion of author’s previous work). To get the idea of what a termination tool can do for us, consider two basic C functions, g (from above),

            

    
void g(int x, int y) {
   if (y > 0)
      while (x > y)
         x = x - y;
}



        
and g2:

            

    
void g2(int x, int y) {
   while (x > y)
      x = x - y;
}



        
For the reasons we have already discussed, the function g always returns control back to its caller, so terminates(g) should return true. Meanwhile, terminates(g2) should return false because, for example, g2(5, 0) will never terminate.
Now comes the difficult function. Consider h:

            

    
void h() {
   if terminates(h) while(1){}
}



        
Notice that it's recursive. What’s the right answer for terminates(h)? The answer cannot be "yes". It also cannot be "no". Why?
Imagine that terminates(h) were to return "yes". If you read the code of h, you’ll see that in this case, the function does not terminate because of the conditional statement in the code of h that will execute the infinite loop while(1){}. Thus, in this case, the terminates(h) answer would be wrong, because h is defined recursively, calling terminates on itself.
Similarly, if terminates(h) were to return "no", then h would in fact terminate and return control to its caller, because the if case of the conditional statement is not met, and there is no else branch. Again, the answer would be wrong. This is why the “Don’t know” answer is actually unavoidable in this case.
The program h is a variation of examples given in Turing’s famous 1936 paper on decidability and Gödel’s incompleteness theorems from 1931. These papers tell us that problems like the halting problem cannot be “solved”, if by“solved” we mean that the solution procedure itself always terminates and answers either “yes” or “no” but never “Don’t know”. But that is not the definition of “solved” that many of us have in mind. For many of us, a tool that sometimes times out or occasionally returns “Don’t know” but, when it gives an answer, always gives the right answer is good enough.
This problem is analogous to airline travel: we know it’s not 100% safe, because crashes have happened in the past, and we are sure that they will happen in the future. But when you land safely, you know it worked that time. The goal of the airline industry is to reduce failure as much as possible, even though it’s in principle unavoidable.
To put that in the context of automated reasoning: for some programs, like h, we can never improve the tool enough to replace the "Don't know" answer. But there are many other cases where today's tools answer "Don't know", but future tools may be able to answer "yes" or "no". The modern scientific challenge for automated-reasoning subject-matter experts is to get the practical tools to return “yes” or “no” as often as possible. As an example of current work, check out CMU professor and Amazon Scholar Marijn Heule and his quest to solve the Collatz termination problem.
Another thing to keep in mind is that automated-reasoning tools are regularly trying to solve “intractable” problems, e.g., problems in the NP complexity class. Here, the same thinking applies that we saw in the case of the halting problem: automated-reasoning tools have powerful heuristics that often work around the intractability problem for specific cases, but those heuristics can (and sometimes do) fail, resulting in “Don’t know” answers or impractically long execution time. The science is to improve the heuristics to minimize that problem.
Nomenclature
A host of names are used in the scientific literature to describe interrelated topics, of which automated reasoning is just one. Here’s a quick glossary:
  • A logic is a formal and mechanical system for defining what is true and untrue. Examples: propositional logic or first-order logic.
  • A theorem is a true statement in logic. Example: the four-color theorem.
  • A proof is a valid argument in logic of a theorem. Example: Gonthier's proof of the four-color theorem. 
  • A mechanical theorem prover is a semi-automated-reasoning tool that checks a machine-readable expression of a proof often written down by a human. These tools often require human guidance. Example: HOL-light, from Amazon researcher John Harrison. 
  • Formal verification is the use of theorem proving when applied to models of computer systems to prove desired properties of the systems. Example: the CompCert verified C compiler. 
  • Formal methods is the broadest term, meaning simply the use of logic to reason formally about models of systems. 
  • Automated reasoning focuses on the automation of formal methods. 
  • A semi-automated-reasoning tool is one that requires hints from the user but still finds valid proofs in logic. 
As you can see, we have a choice of monikers when working in this space. At Amazon, we’ve chosen to use automated reasoning, as we think it best captures our ambition for automation and scale. In practice, some of our internal teams use both automated and semi-automated reasoning tools, because the scientists we've hired can often get semi-automated reasoning tools to succeed where the heuristics in fully automated reasoning might fail. For our externally facing customer features, we currently use only fully automated approaches.
Next steps
In this essay, I’ve introduced the idea of automated reasoning, with the smallest of toy programs. I haven’t described how to handle realistic programs, with heap or concurrency. In fact, there are a wide variety of automated-reasoning tools and techniques, solving problems in all kinds of different domains, some of them quite narrow. To describe them all and the many branches and sub-disciplines of the field (e.g. “SMT solving”, “higher-order logic theorem proving”, “separation logic”) would take thousands of blogs posts and books.
Automated reasoning goes back to the early inventors of computers. And logic itself (which automated reasoning attempts to solve) is thousands of years old. In order to keep this post brief, I’ll stop here and suggest further reading. Note that it’s very easy to get lost in the weeds reading depth-first into this area, and you could emerge more confused than when you started. I encourage you to use a bounded depth-first search approach, looking sequentially at a wide variety of tools and techniques in only some detail and then moving on, rather than learning only one aspect deeply.
Suggested books:
International conferences/workshops:
Tool competitions:
Some tools:
Interviews of Amazon staff about their use of automated reasoning:
AWS Lectures aimed at customers and industry:
AWS talks aimed at the automated-reasoning science community:
AWS blog posts and informational videos:
Some course notes by Amazon Scholars who are also university professors:
A fun deep track:
Some algorithms found in the automated theorem provers we use today date as far back as 1959, when Hao Wang used automated reasoning to prove the theorems from Principia Mathematica.

    



                            
                        

                    
                


                
                    

                        

    

    

        Research areas
    


    
        
    



                    

                

                
                    

                        

    

    

        Tags
    


    
        
    



                    

                

                

                
                    
About the Author

                    

                        
                            
    

        

            
                

                    Byron Cook
                

            
            
            
                

                    Amazon vice president and distinguished scientist Byron Cook is a leader in the field of formal verification, known for his contributions to SAT, SMT, and symbolic model checking, with applications to biological systems, computer operating systems, programming languages, and security. Byron’s work on automated reasoning at Amazon has led to higher levels of assurance in the cloud as well as new customer features.
                

            
        

    



                        
                    

                
            

        


        
    

    
    



    

        
Related content

        
    




    
        
    

    



    
    



    

        
Work with us
See more jobs
        
            See more jobs
        
    




    
        

            

                
                    

                        

    

    

        
            

                 Human-Robot Interaction Applied Scientist , Fauna
            

        

        

            
                
                    

                
            

            

            

            

            
                
US, NY, New York

            
        


        
    
We are seeking a Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) Applied Scientist to develop cutting-edge interactions that make robots feel alive, personal, and fun. In this role, you will focus on verbal and non-verbal conversational systems, social dynamics, memory, and long-term relationship formation between robots, their environments, and the people they interact with. Your contributions will be essential in advancing robotics by enabling expressive, socially intelligent, and trustworthy interactions between robots and humans. Key job responsibilities - Develop interactive systems that leverage large language models, multimodal inputs and outputs, reinforcement learning from human feedback, or other advanced techniques to achieve fluid, engaging, and socially appropriate robot behavior - Design and implement intelligent conversational systems that handle turn-taking, grounding, interruption, and incorporates context drawn from a robot's physical environment and shared history with a user - Integrate perceptual sensor streams including gaze, facial expression, gesture, posture, and more to understand social context and produce coherent, lifelike interactions. - Develop memory and personalization systems that allow robots to form lasting relationships with individual users, learn their environments, and adapt their behavior over weeks and months - Stay updated on advancements in HRI, NLP, multimodal AI, and cognitive and social science to apply cutting-edge techniques to robot interaction challenges - Lead technical projects from conception through production deployment - Mentor junior scientists and engineers - Bridge research initiatives with practical engineering implementation




        

        

        

        
    


    



                    

                
                    

                        

    

    

        
            

                Applied Scientist II, Prime Video Personalization and Discovery Science, Prime Video - Personalization and Discovery Science
            

        

        

            
                
                    

                
            

            

            

            

            
                
US, CA, Sunnyvale

            
        


        
    
Prime Video is a first-stop entertainment destination offering customers a vast collection of premium programming in one app available across thousands of devices. Prime members can customize their viewing experience and find their favorite movies, series, documentaries, and live sports – including Amazon MGM Studios-produced series and movies; licensed fan favorites; and programming from Prime Video add-on subscriptions such as Apple TV+, Max, Crunchyroll and MGM+. All customers, regardless of whether they have a Prime membership or not, can rent or buy titles via the Prime Video Store, and can enjoy even more content for free with ads. Are you interested in shaping the future of entertainment? Prime Video's technology teams are creating best-in-class digital video experience. As a Prime Video technologist, you’ll have end-to-end ownership of the product, user experience, design, and technology required to deliver state-of-the-art experiences for our customers. You’ll get to work on projects that are fast-paced, challenging, and varied. You’ll also be able to experiment with new possibilities, take risks, and collaborate with remarkable people. We’ll look for you to bring your diverse perspectives, ideas, and skill-sets to make Prime Video even better for our customers. With global opportunities for talented technologists, you can decide where a career Prime Video Tech takes you! Key job responsibilities Develop foundation models for content understanding using state-of-the-art deep learning and multimodal learning techniques to analyze video and text Build time sequence foundation models to understand and predict customer behavior patterns and viewing trajectories Work closely with engineers and product managers to design, implement and launch solutions end-to-end across various Prime Video experiences Design and conduct offline and online (A/B) experiments to evaluate proposed solutions based on in-depth data analyses Effectively communicate technical and non-technical ideas with teammates and stakeholders Stay up-to-date with advancements and the latest modeling techniques in foundation models, multimodal learning, and time series analysis Publish your research findings in top conferences and journals A day in the life We're using advanced approaches such as foundation models to connect information about our videos and customers from a variety of information sources, acquiring and processing data sets on a scale that only a few companies in the world can match. This will enable us to recommend titles effectively, even when we don't have a large behavioral signal (to tackle the cold-start title problem). It will also allow us to find our customer's niche interests, helping them discover groups of titles that they didn't even know existed. We are looking for creative & customer obsessed machine learning scientists who can apply the latest research, state of the art algorithms and ML to build highly scalable page personalization solutions. You'll be a research leader in the space and a hands-on ML practitioner, guiding and collaborating with talented teams of engineers and scientists and senior leaders in the Prime Video organization. You will also have the opportunity to publish your research at internal and external conferences. About the team Prime Video Recommendation Science team owns science solution to power recommendation and personalization experience on various Prime Video surfaces and devices. We work closely with the engineering teams to launch our solutions in production.




        

        

        

        
    


    



                    

                
                    

                        

    

    

        
            

                Sr. Applied Scientist, Prime Video - Personalization and Discovery Science, Prime Video - Personalization and Discovery Science
            

        

        

            
                
                    

                
            

            

            

            

            
                
US, CA, Sunnyvale

            
        


        
    
Prime Video is a first-stop entertainment destination offering customers a vast collection of premium programming in one app available across thousands of devices. Prime members can customize their viewing experience and find their favorite movies, series, documentaries, and live sports – including Amazon MGM Studios-produced series and movies; licensed fan favorites; and programming from Prime Video add-on subscriptions such as Apple TV+, Max, Crunchyroll and MGM+. All customers, regardless of whether they have a Prime membership or not, can rent or buy titles via the Prime Video Store, and can enjoy even more content for free with ads. Are you interested in shaping the future of entertainment? Prime Video's technology teams are creating best-in-class digital video experience. As a Prime Video technologist, you’ll have end-to-end ownership of the product, user experience, design, and technology required to deliver state-of-the-art experiences for our customers. You’ll get to work on projects that are fast-paced, challenging, and varied. You’ll also be able to experiment with new possibilities, take risks, and collaborate with remarkable people. We’ll look for you to bring your diverse perspectives, ideas, and skill-sets to make Prime Video even better for our customers. With global opportunities for talented technologists, you can decide where a career Prime Video Tech takes you! We are looking for a self-motivated, passionate and resourceful Applied Scientist to bring diverse perspectives, ideas, and skill-sets to make Prime Video even better for our customers. You will spend your time as a hands-on machine learning practitioner and a research leader. You will play a key role on the team, building and guiding machine learning models from the ground up. At the end of the day, you will have the reward of seeing your contributions benefit millions of Amazon.com customers worldwide. Key job responsibilities Develop foundation models for content understanding using state-of-the-art deep learning and multimodal learning techniques to analyze video, audio, and text. Build time sequence foundation models to understand and predict customer behavior patterns and viewing trajectories. Work closely with engineers and product managers to design, implement and launch solutions end-to-end across various Prime Video experiences. Design and conduct offline and online (A/B) experiments to evaluate proposed solutions based on in-depth data analyses. Effectively communicate technical and non-technical ideas with teammates and stakeholders. Stay up-to-date with advancements and the latest modeling techniques in foundation models, multimodal learning, and time series analysis. Publish your research findings in top conferences and journals. About the team Prime Video Recommendation Science team owns science solution to power recommendation and personalization experience on various Prime Video surfaces and devices. We work closely with the engineering teams to launch our solutions in production.




        

        

        

        
    


    



                    

                
                    

                        

    

    

        
            

                Research Scientist, Fauna
            

        

        

            
                
                    

                
            

            

            

            

            
                
US, NY, New York

            
        


        
    
We are seeking an Research 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




        

        

        

        
    


    



                    

                
                    

                        

    

    

        
            

                Research Scientist, Special Projects
            

        

        

            
                
                    

                
            

            

            

            

            
                
US, WA, Seattle

            
        


        
    
Innovators 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 nextlevel. 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. As a Research Scientist, you will work with a unique and gifted team developing exciting products for consumers and collaborate with cross-functional teams. Our team rewards intellectual curiosity while maintaining a laser-focus in bringing products to market. At the intersession of both academic and applied research in this product area, you have the opportunity to work together with some of the most talented scientists, engineers, and product managers. 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.




        

        

        

        
    


    



                    

                
                    

                        

    

    

        
            

                Applied Scientist, Amazon Customer Service
            

        

        

            
                
                    

                
            

            

            

            

            
                
US, WA, Seattle

            
        


        
    
The Data Intelligence team is a new function within Amazon Customer Service (CS). We own the end-to-end process of defining, building, implementing, and monitoring a comprehensive data strategy. We also develop and apply Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), Machine Learning (ML), Ontology, and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to enhance customer service associate and customer experiences. As an Applied Scientist, you'll own the definition and implementation of customer-focused, AI-driven innovation in Amazon Customer Service globally, leveraging GenAI, ML, and/or NLP to transform complex business requirements and customer needs into innovative technology solutions. Your expertise will be key in shaping data-driven strategies and addressing complex data challenges. With your expertise in AI, text analysis, embeddings, language modeling, and generation, you'll design and develop scalable AI-powered technology solutions, prioritize initiatives, drive data-driven insights, and deliver business impact. This position will advance applied science best practices, leverage data and AI to drive customer experience improvements, and set new global standards for customer experience. This role requires you to work with a cross-functional team, including scientists, engineers, and product managers, to develop scalable and maintainable AI solutions for both structured and unstructured data. The ideal candidate has strong technical skills in AI techniques (e.g., automated reasoning, reasoning, planning, knowledge representation), excellent written documentation skills, and experience with big data technologies. Success in this role requires combining deep business knowledge with hands-on technical skills to solve customer problems and address complex technical challenges. Key job responsibilities - Develop innovative solutions to complex problems (e.g., Automated Reasoning for Trusted AI-Enabled Customer Service). - Apply technical expertise to implement novel algorithms and modeling solutions, in collaboration with other scientists and engineers. - Analyze data and define metrics to identify actionable insights and measure improvements in customer experience. - Communicate results and insights to both technical and non-technical audiences through written reports, presentations, and internal/external publications. - Collaborate with product management and engineering teams to integrate and optimize models in production systems. A day in the life A typical day as an Applied Scientist in the Data Intelligence team involves combining business expertise with hands-on problem-solving in ML and AI. The role encompasses tackling complex data initiatives, ensuring alignment with customer needs and business objectives, and translating business requirements into practical AI-driven solutions. Working collaboratively with cross-functional teams, this position involves designing and enhancing AI models, focusing on efficiency, precision, and scalability. Daily activities include ensuring data quality, monitoring model performance, and generating actionable insights from vast amounts of information. Each day presents opportunities to resolve complex technical challenges, advance important AI projects, and conceive innovative ways to leverage data in transforming the customer experience. About the team The Data Intelligence team is a new function within Amazon Customer Service. We develop and apply Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), Machine Learning (ML), and Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to enhance customer service associate and customer experiences.




        

        

        

        
    


    



                    

                
                    

                        

    

    

        
            

                Applied Scientist II
            

        

        

            
                
                    

                
            

            

            

            

            
                
US, MA, N.reading

            
        


        
    
Amazon is seeking exceptional talent to help develop the next generation of advanced robotics systems that will transform automation at Amazon's scale. We're building revolutionary robotic systems that combine cutting-edge AI, sophisticated control systems, and advanced mechanical design to create adaptable automation solutions capable of working safely alongside humans in dynamic environments. This is a unique opportunity to shape the future of robotics and automation at an unprecedented scale, working with world-class teams pushing the boundaries of what's possible in robotic dexterous manipulation, locomotion, and human-robot interaction. This role presents an opportunity to shape the future of robotics through innovative applications of deep learning and large language models. At Amazonwe leverage advanced robotics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to solve complex operational challenges at an unprecedented scale. Our fleet of robots operates across hundreds of facilities worldwide, working in sophisticated coordination to fulfill our mission of customer excellence. The ideal candidate will contribute to research that bridges the gap between theoretical advancement and practical implementation in robotics. You will be part of a team that's revolutionizing how robots learn, adapt, and interact with their environment. Join us in building the next generation of intelligent robotics systems that will transform the future of automation and human-robot collaboration. Key job responsibilities - Collaborate with simulation and robotics experts to translate physical modeling needs into robust, scalable, and maintainable simulation solutions. - Design and implement high-performance simulation modeling and tools for rigid and deformable body simulation. - Identify and optimize performance bottlenecks in simulation pipelines to support real-time and batch simulation workflows. - Help build validation and unit testing pipelines to ensure correctness and physical fidelity of simulation results. - Identify potential sources of sim-to-real gaps and propose modeling and numerical approximations to reduce them. - Stay current with the latest advances in numerical methods, parallel computing, and GPU architectures, and incorporate them into our tools.




        

        

        

        
    


    



                    

                
                    

                        

    

    

        
            

                Applied Science Manager
            

        

        

            
                
                    

                
            

            

            

            

            
                
US, MA, North Reading

            
        


        
    
robotics systems that will transform automation at Amazon's scale. We're building revolutionary robotic systems that combine cutting-edge AI, sophisticated control systems, and advanced mechanical design to create adaptable automation solutions capable of working safely alongside humans in dynamic environments. This is a unique opportunity to shape the future of robotics and automation at unprecedented scale, working with world-class teams pushing the boundaries of what's possible in robotic manipulation, locomotion, and human-robot interaction. This role presents an opportunity to shape the future of robotics through innovative applications of deep learning and large language models. At Amazon Industrial Robotics we leverage advanced robotics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to solve complex operational challenges at unprecedented scale. Our fleet of robots operates across hundreds of facilities worldwide, working in sophisticated coordination to fulfill our mission of customer excellence. We are pioneering the development of robotics foundation models that: Enable unprecedented generalization across diverse tasks Enable unprecedented robustness and reliability, industry-ready Integrate multi-modal learning capabilities (visual, tactile, linguistic) Accelerate skill acquisition through demonstration learning Enhance robotic perception and environmental understanding Streamline development processes through reusable capabilities The ideal candidate will contribute to research that bridges the gap between theoretical advancement and practical implementation in robotics. You will be part of a team that's revolutionizing how robots learn, adapt, and interact with their environment. Join us in building the next generation of intelligent robotics systems that will transform the future of automation and human-robot collaboration. As an Applied Science Manager in the Foundation Model team, you will build and lead a team that develops and improves machine learning systems that help robots perceive, reason, and act in real-world environments. You will set the technical direction for leveraging state-of-the-art models (open source and internal research), evaluating them on representative tasks, and adapting/optimizing them to meet robustness, safety, and performance needs. You will drive the capability roadmap and the evaluation strategy that defines “what the robot brain can do,” and you will sponsor targeted innovation when gaps remain. You’ll collaborate closely with research, controls, hardware, and product teams, and ensure the team’s outputs can be further customized and deployed by downstream teams on specific robot embodiments.




        

        

        

        
    


    



                    

                
                    

                        

    

    

        
            

                Applied Science Manager, Computer Vision, Perception Science, Prime Air Vehicle Software
            

        

        

            
                
                    

                
            

            

            

            

            
                
US, WA, Seattle

            
        


        
    
Are you ready to revolutionize the future of aerial delivery? Join our pioneering team working on autonomous drone technology that will transform how Amazon delivers to customers. As a Manager III, Applied Science for our Perception team, you'll lead scientists and engineers building world-class machine learning models and computer vision and new frontier model based systems that enable drones to safely navigate complex environments. In this high-impact role, you'll guide the development of perception systems combining radar, machine learning, and distributed computing to solve unprecedented challenges in autonomous flight. Your work will directly shape the future of Amazon's drone delivery service, bringing innovative solutions to customers while pushing the boundaries of what's possible in autonomous systems technology. Key job responsibilities Lead and mentor a team of scientists and software engineers developing advanced perception systems that integrate computer vision, machine learning algorithms, and detect-and-avoid capabilities for autonomous drones Define and drive the technical vision and roadmap for perception technology, making strategic architectural decisions that balance current delivery needs with long-term innovation goals Collaborate with cross-functional teams including hardware engineers, autonomy specialists, and product stakeholders to deliver scalable, distributed systems that meet rigorous safety and performance requirements Establish audit mechanisms and metrics to track system performance, model accuracy, and team progress against goals, using data-driven insights to continuously improve customer experience Build and grow an inclusive, high-performing team through effective hiring, mentoring, and career development while fostering a culture of innovation and technical excellence About the team The Perception team is at the heart of Amazon's autonomous drone delivery initiative, developing the advanced computer vision and machine learning systems that enable safe, reliable flight operations. Our team tackles fascinating challenges at the intersection of radar technology, distributed computing, and real-time detection algorithms, creating solutions that have never been built before. We work in an innovative, collaborative environment where every scientists and engineer's contribution directly impacts the future of delivery technology. As we scale Amazon's drone delivery to new locations, you'll help shape both the technical direction and team culture that will define this transformative service for years to come.




        

        

        

        
    


    



                    

                
                    

                        

    

    

        
            

                Principal Applied Scientist, Contact-Rich Manipulation, AR Manipulation HW & Systems
            

        

        

            
                
                    

                
            

            

            

            

            
                
US, MA, North Reading

            
        


        
    
How should a robot dig a single item out of a cluttered bin, feel when it has made contact, and adjust in real time without crushing what it touches? Single- and dual-arm contact-rich manipulation at production scale is still being solved. We are looking for a Principal Applied Scientist to define the control architectures that our next-generation grasping systems will be built on. The Manipulation Robotics team develops robotic workcells to pick, grasp, and move millions of items and packages across Amazon's fulfillment network. Reaching into clutter and grasping deformable and diverse items depends on solving contact: force-aware control, compliant behaviors, and the layering of classical controllers and learned policies. You will set the technical direction for how the team approaches contact-rich manipulation, working with leaders across the organization to establish this foundational capability. Key job responsibilities - Own the technical direction and contact-control strategy for contact-rich manipulation, including the boundary between low-level control and learned policy, balancing tradeoffs among speed, performance, quality, cost, complexity, and adaptability. - Identify the open scientific problems that gate contact-rich manipulation at production scale, and invent the methods that solve them. - Architect contact control built on force and tactile sensing, covering compliant-contact behaviors, hybrid position and force control, and the safe interaction envelope. Stay hands-on and personally write critical-path code. - Partner with scientists, hardware designers, and systems engineers to treat the platform, arm, and end-effector as one coherent hierarchical system, including co-designing compliant end-effectors as part of the control strategy. - Create mechanisms to learn from fielded production, reasoning rigorously about failure modes and improving recovery from unexpected contact. - Drive how simulation, analytical models, demonstrations, and real-robot data are used together to turn lab results into scaled warehouse performance. - Establish the reference implementations, evaluation standards, and design review practices that let others build on the architecture and scale your impact without your continuous involvement. - Develop other scientists and engineers through mentorship, technical review, and a leading role in hiring. A day in the life Amazon offers a full range of benefits that support you and eligible family members, including domestic partners. Benefits can vary by location, the number of regularly scheduled hours you work, length of employment, and job status such as seasonal or temporary employment. The benefits that generally apply to regular, full-time employees include: 1. Medical, Dental, and Vision Coverage 2. Maternity and Parental Leave Options 3. Paid Time Off (PTO) 4. 401(k) Plan If you are not sure that every qualification on the list above describes you exactly, we'd still love to hear from you! At Amazon, we value people with unique backgrounds, experiences, and skillsets. If you’re passionate about this role and want to make an impact on a global scale, please apply! About the team We are a small, high-ownership team building robotic workcells, from early-stage R&D through products fielded 24/7 in Amazon fulfillment centers. We work at the hard edge of grasping: contact-rich tasks, deformable and variable items, and mechanisms that must survive millions of cycles at fleet scale. Our people own problems end to end, and scientists work shoulder to shoulder with mechanical, electrical, software, and controls engineers in a fast-moving, highly empowered environment where research ideas turn into shipped systems.




        

        

        

        
    


    



                    

                
            

        

    

    

        See more jobs
    






        




    

        
            
        
        

            

                
                    

                        

                    

                
            

            
                

                    

                        

  

      
          

              
                  
    
        View from space of a connected network around planet Earth representing the Internet of Things.
    

              
          

      

      

        

          
              
Get more from Amazon Science

          

          
    
Subscribe to our newsletter



        

        
          
        
      

  



                    

                

            
        

    


    

        

        
            
Amazon.com | Conditions of Use | Privacy | © 1996-2026 Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates

        
        
            

    
Social