Amazon Science Community and Machine Learning University call for proposals - Spring 2022

Making Amazon the best place in the world to do customer-obsessed science and engineering

About this CFP

The Amazon Science Community and Machine Learning University teams are committed to making Amazon the best place in the world to do customer-obsessed science and engineering. Our programs, including onboarding bootcamps, mentorship programs, and instructor-led classes, help Amazon’s scientists and engineers do their best work. We aim to advance the state of the art in the design and execution of these programs. We are seeking to fund economics and social science research on the following topics:

  • Scientific productivity metrics – high quality science can take years to develop and have a customer impact; how can we know in the meantime if a research team is flourishing or floundering?
  • Scientific impact metrics – scientific work not only operates on long timelines, it has a cumulative effect.  One research paper may not get turned into a product or service, but it can serve as critical inspiration for the next research paper that does.  How can we assess the impact of a given research project, team, or individual, beyond basic tools like citation and patent metrics?
  • Team-based research success factors – impactful science is increasingly done by teams; research teams to create the science, and engineering teams to implement scientific solutions on behalf of customers.  What are the most critical factors that cause a team to have scientific success, and what mechanisms can influence them?
  • Individual-based research success factors – what are the key factors to individual scientific success, and which of these are a product of the institutional environment?  How can we optimize the physical and social environment to allow scientists to do their best work?
  • Educational design – what drives success in technical courses when presented in-person, live remote, or self-paced?  What drives students to choose one option or the other, and how can we leverage hybrid formats to bring together the strengths of each of these?  What are the data-driven best practices for online education, particularly with regards to recent shifts in working practices?  How do we measure practical success when teaching scientific knowledge at scale?

Timeline

Submission period: June 3 - July 8, 2022

Decision letters will be sent out December 2022

Award details

Selected Principal Investigators (PIs) may receive the following:

  • Unrestricted funds, no more than $80,000 USD
  • AWS Promotional Credits, no more than $20,000 USD
  • Training resources, including AWS tutorials and hands-on sessions with Amazon scientists and engineers

Awards are structured as one-year unrestricted gifts. The budget should include a list of expected costs specified in USD, and should not include administrative overhead costs. The final award amount will be determined by the awards panel.

Eligibility requirements

Please refer to the ARA Program rules on the FAQ page.

Proposal requirements

Proposals should be prepared according to the proposal template.

PIs should either include plans for open source contributions or state that they do not plan to make any open source contributions (data or code) under the proposed effort.

Selection criteria

ARA will make the funding decisions based on the potential impact to the research community and quality of the scientific content.

Expectations from recipients

To the extent deemed reasonable, Award recipients should acknowledge the support from ARA. Award recipients will inform ARA of publications, presentations, code and data releases, blogs/social media posts, and other speaking engagements referencing the results of the supported research or the Award. Award recipients are expected to provide updates and feedback to ARA via surveys or reports on the status of their research. Award recipients will have an opportunity to work with ARA on an informational statement about the awarded project that may be used to generate visibility for their institutions and ARA.

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Amazon Robotics is seeking an exceptional Applied Scientist to join our Foundation Models and Agentic AI team. This role presents an opportunity to shape the future of robotics through innovative applications of large vision-language-action (VLA) models, reasoning and task planning models, and reinforcement learning. At Amazon 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 - Integrate multi-modal learning capabilities (visual, depth, force, tactile, linguistic) - Accelerate policy skill acquisition through imitation learning and reinforcement 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. Key job responsibilities As an Applied Scientist in the Applied AI and Robotics Foundations Model team, you will: - Model Development and Training: Designing and implementing the model architectures, training and fine tuning the foundation models using various datasets, and optimize the model performance through iterative experiments - Data Management: Process and prepare training data, including data governance, provenance tracking, data quality checks and creating reusable data pipelines. - Experimentation and Validation: Design and execute experiments to test model capabilities on the simulator and on the embodiment, validate performance across different scenarios, create a baseline and iteratively improve model performance. - Code Development: Write clean, maintainable, well commented and documented code, contribute to training infrastructure, create tools for model evaluation and testing, and implement necessary APIs - Research: Stay current with latest developments in foundation models and robotics, assist in literature reviews and research documentation, prepare technical reports and presentations, and contribute to research discussions and brainstorming sessions. - Collaboration: Work closely with senior scientists, engineers, and leaders across multiple teams, participate in knowledge sharing, support integration efforts with robotics hardware teams, and help document best practices and methodologies. A day in the life 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: - Medical, Dental, and Vision Coverage - Maternity and Parental Leave Options - Paid Time Off (PTO) - 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 Are you inspired by invention? Is problem solving through teamwork in your DNA? Do you like the idea of seeing how your work impacts the bigger picture? Answer yes to any of these and you’ll fit right in here at Amazon Robotics. We are a smart, collaborative team of enthusiastic doers that work passionately to apply innovative advances in robotics and software to solve real-world challenges that will transform our customers’ experiences in ways we can’t even image yet. We invent new improvements every day. We are Amazon Robotics and we will give you the tools and support you need to invent with us in ways that are rewarding, fulfilling and fun.
IN, HR, Gurugram
Lead ML teams building large-scale forecasting and optimization systems that power Amazon’s global transportation network and directly impact customer experience and cost. As an Sr Applied Scientist, you will set scientific direction, mentor applied scientists, and partner with engineering and product leaders to deliver production-grade ML solutions at massive scale. Key job responsibilities 1. Lead and grow a high-performing team of Applied Scientists, providing technical guidance, mentorship, and career development. 2. Define and own the scientific vision and roadmap for ML solutions powering large-scale transportation planning and execution. 3. Guide model and system design across a range of techniques, including tree-based models, deep learning (LSTMs, transformers), LLMs, and reinforcement learning. 4. Ensure models are production-ready, scalable, and robust through close partnership with stakeholders. Partner with Product, Operations, and Engineering leaders to enable proactive decision-making and corrective actions. 5. Own end-to-end business metrics, directly influencing customer experience, cost optimization, and network reliability. 6. Help contribute to the broader ML community through publications, conference submissions, and internal knowledge sharing. A day in the life Your day includes reviewing model performance and business metrics, guiding technical design and experimentation, mentoring scientists, and driving roadmap execution. You’ll balance near-term delivery with long-term innovation while ensuring solutions are robust, interpretable, and scalable. Ultimately, your work helps improve delivery reliability, reduce costs, and enhance the customer experience at massive scale.
US, WA, Bellevue
Have you ever ordered a product on Amazon and when that box with the smile arrived you wondered how it got to you so fast? Have you wondered where it came from and how much it cost Amazon to deliver it to you? Have you also wondered what are different ways that the transportation assets can be used to delight the customer even more. If so, the Amazon transportation Services, North America Sort Center Science team is for you . We manage the delivery of tens of millions of products every week to Amazon’s customers, achieving on-time delivery in a cost-effective manner. We are looking for an enthusiastic, customer obsessed Applied Scientist with strong scientific thinking, good software and statistics experience, skills to help manage projects and operations, improve metrics, and develop scalable processes and tools. The primary role of an Applied Scientist within Amazon is to address business challenges through building a compelling case, and using data to influence change across the organization. This individual will be given responsibility on their first day to own those business challenges and the autonomy to think strategically and make data driven decisions. Decisions and tools made in this role will have significant impact to the customer experience, as it will have a major impact on how we operate the middle mile network. Ideal candidates will be a high potential, strategic and analytic graduate with a PhD in (Operations Research, Statistics, Engineering, and Supply Chain) ready for challenging opportunities in the core of our world class operations space. Great candidates have a history of operations research, machine learning , and the ability to use data and research to make changes. This role requires robust skills in research and implementation of scalable products and models . This individual will need to be able to work with a team, but also be comfortable making decisions independently, in what is often times an ambiguous environment. Key job responsibilities Key job responsibilities - Design and develop advanced mathematical optimization and machine learning solutions in the domains of network design and optimization. - Research, prototype, simulate, and experiment with these models using programming languages such as Java and Python; participate in the production level deployment. - Create, enhance, and maintain technical documentation and science designs. - Present to other Scientists, Product, and Software Engineering teams, as well as Stakeholders. - Lead project plans from a scientific perspective by managing product features, technical risks, milestones and launch plans.
US, WA, Seattle
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 subscriptions such as Apple TV+, HBO Max, Peacock, 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 team member, 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 The science challenges include: - Heterogeneous customer responses. The same customer responds differently to ads depending on what they’re watching, how engaged they are, and their broader streaming context. We need to understand and predict this variation to make better advertising decisions in real time. - Signal sparsity in streaming. Unlike search or retail advertising, streaming offers no clicks, no conversions, and limited direct feedback. We must develop creative approaches to infer customer preferences, intent, and tolerance from indirect behavioral signals. - Personalization at scale. A one-size-fits-all ad experience leaves value on the table for both customers and the business. We build systems that adapt ad load, placement, and content to individual viewers across 100M+ customers and 100k+ titles. - Small effects, large variance. Ad interventions typically produce 0.1-2% shifts in engagement, effects easily overwhelmed by natural behavioral variance. Measuring, attributing, and optimizing these small signals requires rigorous experimental design and causal methodologies. - Competing objectives. Revenue, customer engagement, long-term retention, and advertiser value are in tension. We develop principled frameworks to navigate these tradeoffs and optimize for sustainable outcomes rather than any single metric. A day in the life - Contribute to the research and development of ML models that personalize advertising decisions for 100M+ customers across 100k+ titles, with production deployment in mind - Develop deep learning architectures (multi-task learning, embedding-based representations) for customer behavior prediction at scale - Design and analyze large-scale A/B experiments, applying causal inference techniques to measure and optimize the impact of ad strategies on customer engagement and monetization - Partner with engineering to ensure models meet production latency and scalability requirements - Collaborate with product managers to frame business problems as tractable ML problems and translate findings into product decisions - Shape the team’s scientific roadmap, identifying high-impact research directions About the team Prime Video Ads is pioneering the use of Generative AI, Deep Learning and Causal ML to empower the next generation of Ads experience in Prime Video. Our vision is to build the world’s most valuable and differentiated ad-supported streaming platform: one where every ad is relevant to the viewer, and every dollar spent by an advertiser delivers measurable results. We are seeking lead applied scientists who have demonstrated experience in advancing state of the art ML algorithms, particularly in Personalization, Relevance, Casual Inference and Gen-AI areas. Your role will be to deliver these innovations as production-ready systems at Amazon scale.
US, WA, Seattle
Pricing is one of the most consequential decisions Amazon makes, and the science behind it needs to be causally rigorous, not just predictive. The P2 Optimization Science team builds the machine learning (ML) systems that power Amazon's pricing decisions at scale: demand lift models, customer lifetime value (LTV) frameworks, and the experimentation infrastructure that validates whether pricing changes actually work. We're looking for a Research Scientist to own causal inference at the intersection of ML and pricing experimentation. Our team has identified a real gap: the methodological bridge between econometric analysis and production-scale ML pipelines needs a practitioner who lives in both worlds. You'll build conditional average treatment effect (CATE) estimation models, design analysis workflows for pricing experiments, and develop reusable causal ML infrastructure that the broader team — including non-ML scientists — can rely on. If you're a scientist who wants to tackle hard causal identification problems in a high-stakes production environment, and who finds satisfaction in making rigorous methods accessible to a broader team, this role is for you. Key job responsibilities - Design, train, evaluate, and deploy end-to-end causal ML pipelines for pricing use cases, including CATE estimation models and heterogeneous treatment effect frameworks. - Serve as the team's causal ML methodology expert — defining identification strategies, model selection criteria, evaluation standards, and the tradeoffs between econometric and ML approaches to causal estimation. - Contribute causal analysis methodology to pricing A/B test post-analysis and build reusable tooling that economists and other non-ML scientists can adopt without requiring deep ML expertise. - Assess emerging causal inference methods (e.g., synthetic difference-in-differences, generalized random forests, causal representation learning) for applicability to Amazon's pricing context, and author internal methodology proposals for adoption. - Partner with senior economists on identification strategy and causal assumptions, collaborate with software and data engineering partners on production deployment, and align with product managers on experiment design requirements. A day in the life Your work directly shapes the prices customers see on hundreds of millions of Amazon products. In a given week you might investigate an optimization anomaly in simulation and trace it to an unmodeled market dynamic, then design an offline evaluation framework to benchmark competing approaches before committing to online testing. You'll collaborate with senior economists on identification strategy for a pricing experiment, present a science proposal for incorporating a new competitiveness signal into an optimization system, or work with the experimentation platform team on randomization design. You'll also have opportunities to write up novel scientific findings for submission to venues such as KDD, NeurIPS, or the ACM Conference on Economics and Computation. About the team The P2 Optimization Science team sits at the center of Amazon's pricing decisions. We build the ML systems, causal inference pipelines, and experimentation infrastructure that determine how prices are set across Amazon's global catalog. Our team brings together research scientists, economists, and engineers who collaborate closely to turn rigorous methodology into production-quality systems with measurable business impact. We value scientific rigor, clear communication across disciplines, and a culture where every team member's work is designed to be extensible and useful beyond their own project. If you want your science to directly influence how hundreds of millions of customers experience Amazon, this is the team to join.
US, CA, San Francisco
Amazon Music is an immersive audio entertainment service that deepens connections between fans, artists, and creators. From personalized music playlists to exclusive podcasts, concert livestreams to artist merch, Amazon Music is innovating at some of the most exciting intersections of music and culture. We offer experiences that serve all listeners with our different tiers of service: Prime members get access to all the music in shuffle mode, and top ad-free podcasts, included with their membership; customers can upgrade to Amazon Music Unlimited for unlimited, on-demand access to 100 million songs, including millions in HD, Ultra HD, and spatial audio; and anyone can listen for free by downloading the Amazon Music app or via Alexa-enabled devices. Join us for the opportunity to influence how Amazon Music engages fans, artists, and creators on a global scale. The Data, Insights, Science and Optimization, Consumer Product and Tech (DISCO CPT) team is looking for a Data Scientist to join a team of Data Scientists, Analytics Leads, Business Intelligence Engineers and Data Engineers who analyze big data, provide analytics and insights as well as build models and algorithms that power product for personalized experiences. The team focuses on accelerating Amazon Music customer growth by empowering Product teams to make sound, customer-centric decisions through data and insights. We build data pipelines, science models, self-service analytics, insights and dashboards, deliver engagement and retention at scale. In this role, you will pioneer and execute advanced analytics and experimentation efforts for the Amazon Music product team. You will work with stakeholders and partners to deliver experimentation insights, author scientific artifacts, build scalable models to advance our analytics and science products. The ideal candidate must be willing to effectively lead science solutions, prioritize across multiple stakeholders and projects and be ready to jump into a fast-paced, dynamic and fun environment. Key job responsibilities 1. Data Scientist I on this role will be a thought partner to Product and Engineering organizations through their expertise in experimentation, statistical modeling and advanced analytics 2. Conceptualize and drive strategic growth areas: app performance, stablity and latency experimentation, Gen AI initiatives, and product excellence. 3. Bridge science, analytics, and engineering to deliver solutions informing strategic decisions on AM technology investments and long-term business performance 4. Drive experimentation, measurement efficiency tooling, and ROI tracking for AM leadership 5. Build and maintain causal models to understand customer sentiment and its impact on key engagement/retention metrics 6. Develop structural and predictive models using data science workflows to deliver measurable customer results A day in the life 1. Lead strategic initiatives across visual and voice experiences, experimentation and customer retention stakeholders 2. Conduct experimentation, build causal models to better understand key drivers for customer retention 3. Evaluate existing metrics and lead deep dives to ensure the right measurement framework is leveraged to measure and enhance user adoption through visual and voice interfaces 4. Partner with product managers to translate business questions into actionable science projects 5. Influence product roadmaps through data-driven insights on customer behavior patterns 6. Identify and resolve customer experience friction points with cross-functional teams Drive adoption of best practices and innovative solutions across the organization
US, WA, Seattle
This is an Applied Scientist position in the AWS Automated Reasoning group. In this role you will work together with leading scientists in the field to develop and apply the latest automated-reasoning techniques, formal methods, and neurosymbolic approaches to ensure safety, security, and correctness of code and services. As Agentic AI becomes the primary method of software development, we are changing the way that computer systems are developed and operated, raising the bar on quality, verifiability, and durability. Automated Reasoning at Amazon is central to maintaining customer trust and improving the customer experience. Automated Reasoning techniques are being applied in diverse areas spanning generative-AI safety, agentic sandboxes, cloud infrastructure verification, software security and verification, cryptographic assurance, and policy validation. The techniques we are applying include automated theorem proving, model checking, constraint solving, and neurosymbolic proof search. This is a unique opportunity to get in early on a rapidly expanding part of AWS and help shape the technology, product, and business. You will have a chance to utilize your deep technical expertise within a fast-paced environment and make a large business and customer impact. Key job responsibilities • Design and implement algorithms and formal methods for automated reasoning, including constraint solving, model checking, static analysis, theorem proving, and program synthesis to verify the correctness, security, and reliability of computing systems. • Solve large or significantly complex problems that require deep knowledge and scientific innovation in your domain; own strategic problem solving and take the lead on design, implementation, and delivery of solutions with long-term quantifiable impact. • Develop new decision procedures, heuristics, and search strategies that improve the scalability and accuracy of verification tools; build and deploy production-grade automated reasoning systems at Amazon scale. • Explore and apply generative AI and machine learning techniques to enhance automated reasoning capabilities, including learning-based heuristics for search and optimization, neural approaches to symbolic reasoning, and methods for verifying the correctness of AI-generated code. • Develop automated reasoning techniques for generative AI and agentic coding systems, including methods for ensuring the safety and alignment of autonomous software agents and applying formal guarantees to large language model outputs. • Conduct original research and publish findings in peer-reviewed venues. • Work with customer teams to understand the nature of their software and the properties they need to establish; identify tools and methods capable of addressing verification needs, including novel analysis capabilities. • Provide cross-organizational technical influence, increasing productivity and effectiveness by sharing deep knowledge and experience; collaborate with partner teams to translate verification capabilities into production systems. • Mentor scientists and engineers on formal methods, neurosymbolic techniques, and best practices for building reliable automated reasoning systems; assist in career development of others.
US, NY, New York
The Measurement Science team in the Measurement, Ad Tech, and Data Science (MADS) organization of Amazon Ads serves a centralized role developing solutions for a multitude of performance measurement products. We create solutions which measure the comprehensive impact of their ad spend, including sales impacts both online and offline and across timescales, and provide actionable insights that enable our advertisers to optimize their media portfolios. We leverage a host of scientific technologies to accomplish this mission, including Generative AI, classical ML, Causal Inference, Natural Language Processing, and Computer Vision. This Principal Applied Scientist leads the technical vision and execution for Amazon Advertising's performance measurement. Our measurement products and tools help customers understand the holistic impact of their spend on Amazon Ads and optimize their portfolios. This is a complex, multi-disciplinary scientific space spanning machine learning, causal inference, statistics and experimentation, natural language processing, and generative AI. As a GenAI-first organization, we build foundational and agentic models that power advertiser use cases across Ads, while empowering our Applied Scientists to directly build and ship products. You will guide a team of scientists with expertise across different domains to come together and innovate on some of the hardest problems in advertising, made more challenging by evolving privacy regulations and technological changes. In measuring the comprehensive impact of advertising, key challenges you will tackle include capturing impact: 1) both for identified and increasingly unidentified web traffic in light of an evolving global privacy landscape; 2) for outcomes across retailers, including both within and beyond Amazon; and 3) for both short- and long-term impacts of advertising. Key job responsibilities * Driving the scientific vision of the teams in your organization and you advise and influence its technical leadership on performance measurement models and products. * Identifying, tackling, and proposing innovative solutions to intrinsically hard, previously unsolved problems. You solve problems pragmatically, applying judgment and experience to balance trade-offs between competing interests. * Bringing clarity to complex problems, probing assumptions, illuminating pitfalls, fostering shared understanding, and guiding towards effective solutions. * Serving and being recognized by internal and external peers as a thought leader in modeled measurement in Ads. You will engage routinely with the broader scientific community, e.g. as a reviewer, program committee member, workshop organizer, or chair at peer-reviewed internal/external conferences. * Leading by example, with your papers, analyses, and code setting the standard in your organization for scientific engineering excellence. * Leading science and design reviews, aligning teams across your organization around coherent algorithmic strategies. * Influencing your team’s science and business strategy by driving one or more team roadmaps contributing to the organization’s roadmap and taking responsibility for some organizational goals. You drive multiple new product features from inception to production launch. * Guiding the career development of others, actively mentoring and educating the larger applied science community on trends, technologies, and best practices. You drive the documentation of scientific innovation. You attract bar-raising talent from academia and industry. * Staying abreast of academic and industry trends, knowing the state of the art, and building on top of existing solutions instead of reinventing when possible. About the team We are a team of scientists across Applied, Research, Data Science and Economist disciplines. You will work with colleagues with deep expertise in ML, NLP, CV, Gen AI, and Causal Inference with a diverse range of backgrounds. We partner closely with top-notch engineers, product managers, sales leaders, and other scientists with expertise in the ads industry and on building scalable modeling and software solutions.
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Amazon Research Awards

Collaborating with scientists around the world to fund research, share knowledge and encourage innovation.