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
        
    




    
        

            

                
                    

                        

    

    

        
            

                Applied Scientist II, Central Machine Learning
            

        

        

            
                
                    

                
            

            

            

            

            
                
IN, KA, Bengaluru

            
        


        
    
Do you want to join an innovative team of scientists who use machine learning and statistical techniques to create state-of-the-art solutions for providing better value to Amazon’s customers? Do you want to build and deploy advanced algorithmic systems that help optimize millions of transactions every day? Are you excited by the prospect of analyzing and modeling terabytes of data to solve real world problems? Do you like to own end-to-end business problems/metrics and directly impact the profitability of the company? Do you like to innovate and simplify? If yes, then you may be a great fit to join the Machine Learning and Data Sciences team for India Consumer Businesses. If you have an entrepreneurial spirit, know how to deliver, love to work with data, are deeply technical, highly innovative and long for the opportunity to build solutions to challenging problems that directly impact the company's bottom-line, we want to talk to you. Major responsibilities - Use machine learning and analytical techniques to create scalable solutions for business problems - Analyze and extract relevant information from large amounts of Amazon’s historical business data to help automate and optimize key processes - Design, development, evaluate and deploy innovative and highly scalable models for predictive learning - Research and implement novel machine learning and statistical approaches - Work closely with software engineering teams to drive real-time model implementations and new feature creations - Work closely with business owners and operations staff to optimize various business operations - Establish scalable, efficient, automated processes for large scale data analyses, model development, model validation and model implementation - Mentor other scientists and engineers in the use of ML techniques




        

        

        

        
    


    



                    

                
                    

                        

    

    

        
            

                Applied SCI III - AMZ007408
            

        

        

            
                
                    

                
            

            

            

            

            
                
US, NY, New York

            
        


        
    
MULTIPLE POSITIONS AVAILABLE Employer: Amazon Development Center U.S., Inc. Offered Position: Applied Scientist III - AMZ007408 Job Location: New York, NY Position Responsibilities: Participate in the design, development, evaluation, deployment, and updating of formal reasoning systems for security, privacy, and data protection applications. Drive technical and scientific innovation in security automation, data protection, and privacy-preserving technologies, with a focus on developing scalable solutions for cloud environments. Develop and/or apply formal verification techniques and automated theorem proving methods for different applications in cloud security and privacy. Collaborate with internal and external users to understand requirements and enhance formal verification and automated reasoning capabilities. Lead research and development efforts in AI security, specifically evaluate emerging threats and opportunities, including securing Generative AI systems and designing robust safeguards. Proactively identify and explore new opportunities for deploying and leveraging formal reasoning solutions across various domains.




        

        

        

        
    


    



                    

                
                    

                        

    

    

        
            

                Applied Scientist, AWS Automated Reasoning
            

        

        

            
                
                    

                
            

            

            

            

            
                
GB, London

            
        


        
    
The Agentic Automated Reasoning Group is building the next generation of software verification tools combining advances in artificial intelligence, the computational capacity of the cloud, and our deep expertise in the domain. Join us if you want to be a part of this transformational endeavor. The Strata team (https://github.com/strata-org) is seeking an applied scientist with broad interest and expertise in model checking, interactive theorem proving, programming language semantics, and generative AI. You will combine your expertise with that of your coworkers to build new tools that solve code analysis problems previously considered beyond reach. Our application areas span all the way from Infrastructure as Code to high-performance cryptography written in assembly code, while our methods span from interactive theorem proving to automated test generation. Each day, hundreds of thousands of developers make billions of transactions worldwide on AWS. They harness the power of the cloud to enable innovative applications, websites, and businesses. Using automated reasoning technology and mathematical proofs, AWS allows customers to answer questions about security, availability, durability, and functional correctness. We call this provable security, absolute assurance in security of the cloud and in the cloud. https://aws.amazon.com/security/provable-security/ Key job responsibilities Work with customer teams to understand the nature of their software and the properties they need to establish of it. Identify tools and methods capable of addressing the verification needs of customers, including any novel analysis capabilities required. Use techniques spanning property-based testing to model checkers, and interactive theorem provers to establish program properties. Explore generative AI techniques to help customers formalize their requirements, find revealing tests, generate required boiler plate for testing and model checking, and find and repair program proofs. About the team The Agentic Automated Reasoning Group at AWS develops and applies state of the art formal methods and automated reasoning techniques to ensure the security, reliability, and correctness of AWS services and customer applications, with a strong focus on AI based agents. Our work innovates tools and services to perform verification at scale and apply them to build safe and secure systems at AWS. We are also pioneering the use of formal verification and automated reasoning to develop agentic systems, ensuring AI agents operate within defined safety boundaries.




        

        

        

        
    


    



                    

                
                    

                        

    

    

        
            

                Member of Technical Staff, FAR (Frontier AI & Robotics)
            

        

        

            
                
                    

                
            

            

            

            

            
                
US, CA, San Francisco

            
        


        
    
Join the next revolution in robotics at Amazon's Frontier AI & Robotics team, where you'll work alongside world-renowned AI pioneers to lead key initiatives in robotic intelligence. As a Member of Technical Staff, you'll spearhead the development of breakthrough foundation models that enable robots to perceive, understand, and interact with the world in unprecedented ways. You'll drive technical excellence in areas such as perception, manipulation, science understanding, sim2real transfer, multi-modal foundation models, and multi-task learning, designing novel algorithms that bridge the gap between state-of-the-art research and real-world deployment at Amazon scale. In this role, you'll combine hands-on technical work with scientific leadership, ensuring your team delivers robust solutions for dynamic real-world environments. You'll leverage Amazon's vast computational resources to tackle ambitious problems in areas like very large multi-modal robotic foundation models and efficient, promptable model architectures that can scale across diverse robotic applications. Key job responsibilities - Lead technical initiatives in robotics foundation models, driving breakthrough approaches through hands-on research and development in areas like open-vocabulary panoptic scene understanding, scaling up multi-modal LLMs, sim2real/real2sim techniques, end-to-end vision-language-action models, efficient model inference, video tokenization - Design and implement novel deep learning architectures that push the boundaries of what robots can understand and accomplish - Guide technical direction for specific research initiatives, ensuring robust performance in production environments - Mentor and support fellow scientists while maintaining strong individual technical contributions - Collaborate with engineering teams to optimize and scale models for real-world applications - Influence technical decisions and implementation strategies within your area of focus A day in the life - Develop and implement novel foundation model architectures, working hands-on with our extensive compute infrastructure - Guide and support fellow scientists in solving complex technical challenges, from sim2real transfer to efficient multi-task learning - Lead focused technical initiatives from conception through deployment, ensuring successful integration with production systems - Drive technical discussions within your team and with key stakeholders - Conduct experiments and prototype new ideas using our massive compute cluster - Mentor team members while maintaining significant hands-on contribution to technical solutions Amazon offers a full range of benefits that support you and eligible family members, including domestic partners and their children. 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 At Frontier AI & Robotics, we're not just advancing robotics – we're reimagining it from the ground up. Our team is building the future of intelligent robotics through ground breaking foundation models and end-to-end learned systems. We tackle some of the most challenging problems in AI and robotics, from developing sophisticated perception systems to creating adaptive manipulation strategies that work in complex, real-world scenarios. What sets us apart is our unique combination of ambitious research vision and practical impact. We leverage Amazon's massive computational infrastructure and rich real-world datasets to train and deploy state-of-the-art foundation models. Our work spans the full spectrum of robotics intelligence – from multimodal perception using images, videos, and sensor data, to sophisticated manipulation strategies that can handle diverse real-world scenarios. We're building systems that don't just work in the lab, but scale to meet the demands of Amazon's global operations. Join us if you're excited about pushing the boundaries of what's possible in robotics, working with world-class researchers, and seeing your innovations deployed at unprecedented scale.




        

        

        

        
    


    



                    

                
                    

                        

    

    

        
            

                Sr. Applied 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 limits. If you’re interested in innovating at scale to address big challenges in the world, this is the team for you. As an Applied Scientist on our team, you will focus on building state-of-the-art ML models for biology. Our team rewards curiosity while maintaining a laser-focus in bringing products to market. Competitive candidates are responsive, flexible, and able to succeed within an open, collaborative, entrepreneurial, startup-like environment. At the forefront of both academic and applied research in this product area, you have the opportunity to work together with a diverse and talented team of scientists, engineers, and product managers and collaborate with other teams. Key job responsibilities - Build, adapt and evaluate ML models for life sciences applications - Collaborate with a cross-functional team of ML scientists, biologists, software engineers and product managers




        

        

        

        
    


    



                    

                
                    

                        

    

    

        
            

                Research Scientist II, WW Sustainability
            

        

        

            
                
                    

                
            

            

            

            

            
                
US, WA, Seattle

            
        


        
    
Join us at the forefront of Amazon's sustainability initiatives to work on environmental and social advancements that support Amazon's long-term worldwide sustainability strategy. At Amazon, we're working to be the most customer-centric company on earth. To get there, we need exceptionally talented, bright, and driven people who are passionate about making a meaningful impact on communities and the environment while helping shape the future of sustainable business practices. Sustainability Science and Innovation (SSI) is a multi-disciplinary team within WW Sustainability combining science, analytics, economics, statistics, machine learning, product development, and engineering expertise. We use data across the sustainability imperatives (carbon, water, waste, biodiversity, environmental risk and more) and these skills and capabilities to identify, develop, experiment, and scale the scientific solutions and innovations necessary for Amazon, customers and partners to help them solve their hardest unmet and evolving sustainability needs and goals. The Worldwide Sustainability (WWS) organization is seeking an exceptional scientific leader to join Amazon's Sustainability Science and Innovation team as a Researcher Scientist for Materials Chemistry Innovation. This role focuses on hands-on experimental research in materials chemistry to accelerate the discovery and validation of sustainable materials through systematic synthesis, characterization, and performance testing. You will lead the design and execution of experimental research campaigns targeting catalysts, functional materials, and sustainability-relevant chemistries across multivariate parameter spaces. You will establish scientific strategy and technical roadmaps for materials discovery while leading research initiatives that tackle complex sustainability challenges in critical industrial sectors. This position requires driving breakthrough solutions in materials synthesis and characterization through internal capabilities and strategic partnerships with universities, industry scientists, and government laboratories. You will mentor junior scientists and engineers while collaborating across Amazon's Innovation Lab Network to translate research into scalable solutions. Your leadership will be essential in developing early-stage, cost-effective materials that address significant technical and economic challenges fundamental to Amazon's operations, requiring you to navigate complex trade-offs between immediate deliverables and long-term environmental impact. You will also shape how emerging automation and AI tools are applied to accelerate materials discovery workflows. The ideal candidate demonstrates extensive experience in materials synthesis, advanced characterization techniques, and systematic experimental design for performance validations. You must possess proven ability to lead cross-functional teams, establish research priorities, and drive scientific innovation from concept to implementation. Deep technical expertise in materials testing methods, combined with strategic vision for translating research into practical applications is essential. Experience with high-throughput and combinatorial experimental approaches to efficiently explore large design spaces is highly valued. Your work will establish new paradigms in sustainable materials discovery through rigorous experimental research and performance testing, directly contributing to Amazon's sustainability goals while creating scalable solutions that extend beyond the company's immediate operations. Key job responsibilities - Develop scientific models that help solve complex and ambiguous sustainability problems, and extract strategic learnings from large datasets. - Work closely with applied scientists and software engineers to implement your scientific models. - Support early-stage strategic sustainability initiatives and effectively learn from, collaborate with, and influence stakeholders to scale-up high-value initiatives. - Support research and development of cross-cutting technologies for industrial decarbonization, including building the data foundation and analytics for new AI models. - Drive innovation in key focus areas including packaging materials, building materials, and alternative fuels. About the team Diverse Experiences: World Wide Sustainability (WWS) values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn’t followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don’t let it stop you from applying. Inclusive Team Culture: It’s in our nature to learn and be curious. Our employee-led affinity groups foster a culture of inclusion that empower us to be proud of our differences. Ongoing events and learning experiences, including our Conversations on Race and Ethnicity (CORE) and AmazeCon conferences, inspire us to never stop embracing our uniqueness. Mentorship & Career Growth: We’re continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth’s Best Employer. That’s why you’ll find endless knowledge-sharing, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional.




        

        

        

        
    


    



                    

                
                    

                        

    

    

        
            

                Zappos Data Scientist II, Zappos/Shopbop Catalog Engineering
            

        

        

            
                
                    

                
            

            

            

            

            
                
US, WI, Madison

            
        


        
    
As a Data Scientist on the Shopbop/Zappos Catalog Tech team, you will design and implement scientific approaches to revolutionize how we manage and enhance our product catalog data for our world-class selection of Shoes, Kids, and Active wear. You will work with Zappos' Senior leadership team to solve complex data challenges through advanced analytics and machine learning - creating innovative solutions and influencing product decisions through data-driven insights. You will lead critical initiatives to reduce catalog errors, accelerate product data capture, and develop state-of-the-art image classification systems for fashion features. You will partner daily with engineering teams and business stakeholders to provide expert guidance on model selection and implementation. As a member of the Zappos technical staff, you will leverage machine learning technologies and have access to industry leaders in AI/ML and E-Commerce to help grow your expertise. You will also routinely collaborate with data science teams across our sister companies at Amazon.com and Shopbop.com. You will push the boundaries of what's possible with applied machine learning and bring innovative solutions to bear for customers (including computer vision, NLP, and advanced ML models). You will think big about how data science can transform our catalog operations and be persistent in delivering robust, scalable solutions. Key job responsibilities Design and implement machine learning approaches to improve catalog data quality. Develop and validate scientific methodologies for automated data capture and classification. Partner with engineering teams to integrate ML models into production systems. Create and present analysis that drives decision-making at the senior leadership level. A day in the life You start the day reviewing model performance metrics, noting some drift in the image classification system that needs investigation. You spend the morning developing a new approach to reduce product attribute errors using recent advances in LLMs. In the afternoon, you meet with engineering teams to advise on model architecture for a new feature, and wrap up by analyzing the results of your latest A/B test on data capture efficiency improvements. About the team Zappos/Shopbop Catalog Tech team owns the software that drives our photostudio, product cataloging, and integration to Amazon's marketplace. We use Amazon's Leadership Principals and Engineering Expertise but have our own fun vibe. We are located in Madison WI, and Las Vegas NV.




        

        

        

        
    


    



                    

                
                    

                        

    

    

        
            

                Sr Manager, Applied Science, Alexa Connections
            

        

        

            
                
                    

                
            

            

            

            

            
                
US, WA, Seattle

            
        


        
    
The Alexa Connections team is building the worlds most trusted AI assistant, that helps get things done and creates moments of joy. We build LLM-powered, next-generation communication features that help customers connect within the household with features like announcements and drop-In, and with people they care about with features like calling, emailing and texting. Using GenAI we proactively personalize every single connection moment whether its connecting with grandparents or communicating with kids teachers, and you can do it all hands free with Alexa! We are hiring a mature Sr. Manager of Applied Science who is an entrepreneurial big thinker that invents and then biases towards action to solve highest priority customer problems. Our portfolio initiative range from highly confidential innovations to data driven quality problems that needs sciences solutions. You will be leading a team of scientists and partnering with product, engineering and design organizations to building on the latest AGI/LLM systems. If you are holding out for an opportunity to: - Join a leadership group that moves fast towards big audacious goals - Lead an organization to balance solving towards problems while working towards the long term vision - Be surrounded by super passionate mission driven colleagues who will challenge you to grow every day - Solve difficult challenges using your expertise in science to invest practical solutions - Create applications at a massive scale used by millions of people - Work with AGI/LLM systems to deliver real experiences, not just research And you are experienced with… - Driving applied science projects end-to-end from ideation, analysis, prototyping, development, metrics, and monitoring - Conducting deep analyses on massive user and contextual data sets - Proposing viable modeling ideas to advance optimization or efficiency, with supporting argument, data, or, preferably, preliminary results - Designing, developing, and maintaining scalable ML models and LLM's with automated training, validation, monitoring and reporting - Staying familiar with the field and apply state-of-the-art ML techniques to NLP and related optimization problems - Publishing peer-reviewed scientific papers in top journals and conferences And you constantly look for opportunities to… - Innovate, simplify, reduce waste, and increase efficiency - Use data to make decisions and validate assumptions - Automate processes otherwise performed by humans - Learn from others and help those around you grow ...then lets chat! Key job responsibilities As a senior leader, you will play a critical role in elevating the team’s scientific and technical rigor, identifying and implementing best-in-class algorithms, methodologies, and infrastructure that enable rapid experimentation and scaling. You will establish a long-term vision for continued scientific innovation, setting strategic goals to future-proof the organization’s technical stacks and ML/LLM frameworks to support new and emerging business objectives. Additionally, you will grow talents, fostering a culture of excellence and continuous learning to enhance the organization’s ability to solve complex problems.




        

        

        

        
    


    



                    

                
                    

                        

    

    

        
            

                Senior Applied Scientist, Applied AI Solutions GTM
            

        

        

            
                
                    

                
            

            

            

            

            
                
US, TX, Dallas

            
        


        
    
Amazon Web Services (AWS) Applied AI Solutions (AAIS) is on a mission to make AI real for enterprises. We build and deploy production AI solutions that drive measurable business outcomes at scale, bringing together applied scientists, AI architects, business development professionals, and GTM specialists to help customers move from AI experimentation to production impact. Within AAIS, the GTM Acceleration team activates the field, measures impact, and scales what works. We are the connective tissue between AAIS product and science teams and the worldwide field organization, ensuring our AI solutions reach customers effectively, that we quantify the value we deliver, and that we build repeatable motions that scale globally. We are looking for an Applied Scientist who will serve as a force multiplier across our customer engagement teams, building the analytical foundations, predictive models, and reusable tooling that power our go-to-market strategy. You will work at the intersection of data science, machine learning, and business strategy, building models that quantify our value proposition, and creating scalable analytical assets that accelerate every engagement. This is a highly visible, high-impact role where your work directly influences how we demonstrate and measure the value of AWS AI solutions for enterprise customers. You will operate with significant autonomy, owning the scientific direction of your projects while collaborating with software engineers, product managers, and business stakeholders. You will identify the right methodology for each problem, whether that is a classical statistical approach, a modern deep learning technique, or a novel combination, and communicate your findings clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences. This role spans Connect Customer initiatives and across the Applied AI solution portfolio, offering the opportunity to pioneer data science approaches that scale intelligent analytics worldwide. If you thrive at the intersection of rigorous science and customer-facing impact and are energized by translating complex model outputs into business decisions, we want to talk to you. Key job responsibilities Design, develop, and deploy statistical models and machine learning pipelines to drive product improvements, business decisions, and customer outcomes Work directly with customers during production pilots to build and deploy AI solutions that demonstrate measurable business value Design and execute A/B experiments and causal inference analyses to measure the impact of new features and model changes Build ROI models, business case tools, and forecasting systems for demand prediction, capacity planning, workforce optimization, and value quantification Apply NLP and generative AI techniques to extract insights from structured and unstructured data at scale, and partner with software engineers to productionize models with reliability, monitoring, and operational excellence Build and own customer analytics capabilities including segmentation (by size tier, AI adoption, product penetration, entitlement), usage trend analysis, propensity modeling, and foundational datasets combining service usage with sales data Create self-service analytics platforms and automated insight delivery mechanisms that enable leadership to pull strategic intelligence on demand Enable field teams with reusable analytical assets, diagnostic notebooks, benchmarking studies, and scalable tooling that accelerate customer engagements Own success metrics and create mechanisms to measure model performance, adoption, and business impact across customer cohorts Define strategic frameworks and GTM recommendations by segment, translating data patterns and market signals into actionable go-to-market motions and investment priorities Communicate findings and technical trade-offs to senior leadership and customer executives through written documents (6-pagers, science reviews) and presentations, operating as a shared resource across 2-3 teams simultaneously About the team Diverse Experiences AWS values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the preferred qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn’t followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don’t let it stop you from applying. Why AWS? Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. We pioneered cloud computing and never stopped innovating — that’s why customers from the most successful startups to Global 500 companies trust our robust suite of products and services to power their businesses. Inclusive Team Culture AWS values curiosity and connection. Our employee-led and company-sponsored affinity groups promote inclusion and empower our people to take pride in what makes us unique. Our inclusion events foster stronger, more collaborative teams. Our continual innovation is fueled by the bold ideas, fresh perspectives, and passionate voices our teams bring to everything we do. Mentorship & Career Growth We’re continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth’s Best Employer. That’s why you’ll find endless knowledge-sharing, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional. Work/Life Balance We value work-life harmony. Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why we strive for flexibility as part of our working culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve.




        

        

        

        
    


    



                    

                
                    

                        

    

    

        
            

                Data Scientist, AWS Compliance & Security Assurance
            

        

        

            
                
                    

                
            

            

            

            

            
                
US, WA, Seattle

            
        


        
    
The AWS Compliance & Security Assurance Engineering team builds tools and services that scale AWS's ability to exceed security and compliance expectations for our regulators, auditors, and customers globally. We create efficiencies for our teams while maintaining transparency for our customers. As a Data Scientist on our data team, you'll have a unique opportunity to build solutions that scale security assurance capabilities through AI-driven approaches. You'll leverage advanced analytics, machine learning techniques, and state-of-the-art AI technologies on top of highly complex datasets to transform our security assurance operations. You'll also help shape our data science roadmap, fostering data-driven decision-making and delivering significant business impact through innovative methodologies. The ideal candidate brings a strong background in automation by leveraging GenAI Large Language Models (LLMs), combined with experience analyzing complex datasets and a proven ability to transform business needs into deliverables. If you're passionate about applying AI to security challenges in a dynamic environment that offers startup-like autonomy with enterprise impact, we want to hear from you. Key job responsibilities * Analyze and extract hidden insights from complex, large-scale datasets using advanced statistical and AI techniques, using hands-on expertise in data wrangling and manipulation. * Identify high-impact business improvement opportunities, lead the design and execution of data science initiatives to address them. * Apply statistical and ML knowledge to specific business problems and data. * Leverage Vision Language Models (VLMs) and Large Language Models (LLMs) to analyze document/image structure, perform content understanding and metadata extraction. * Rapidly prototype and test AI solutions, while iterating quickly based on data and feedback. * Collaborate cross-functionally to deeply understand business requirements, customer needs, and technical constraints; transforming discovered information into data-driven solutions and actionable recommendations. * Communicate complex technical concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders; present compelling insights and evidence-based recommendations to leadership. * Stay up-to-date on the latest advancements in AI and identify opportunities to apply emerging techniques to the space. * Collaborate with Business Intelligence, Data Engineers and SDEs to drive the collection of new data and refinement of existing data sources to continually improve data quality. * Actively participate in team design reviews, data modeling discussions, brainstorming activities while mentoring colleagues in state-of-the-art AI tools and methodologies. About the team Diverse Experiences Amazon Security values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn’t followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don’t let it stop you from applying. Why Amazon Security? At Amazon, security is central to maintaining customer trust and delivering delightful customer experiences. Our organization is responsible for creating and maintaining a high bar for security across all of Amazon’s products and services. We offer talented security professionals the chance to accelerate their careers with opportunities to build experience in a wide variety of areas including cloud, devices, retail, entertainment, healthcare, operations, and physical stores. Inclusive Team Culture In Amazon Security, it’s in our nature to learn and be curious. Ongoing DEI events and learning experiences inspire us to continue learning and to embrace our uniqueness. Addressing the toughest security challenges requires that we seek out and celebrate a diversity of ideas, perspectives, and voices. Training & Career Growth We’re continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth’s Best Employer. That’s why you’ll find endless knowledge-sharing, training, and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional. Work/Life Balance We value work-life harmony. Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why flexible work hours and arrangements are part of our culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve.




        

        

        

        
    


    



                    

                
            

        

    

    

        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