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Frequently asked questions

In addition to the FAQs below, please view the ARA Program Rules.
General
General
What research areas does ARA fund?
ARA funds in a variety of research areas relevant to Amazon, such as applied machine learning, automated reasoning, computer vision, fairness in artificial intelligence, machine learning algorithms and theory, natural language processing, robotics, security, sustainability and more. Please refer to the detailed CFPs for more information.
What types of proposals does ARA fund?
The Amazon Research Awards (ARA) program funds academic research and related contributions to open-source projects by top academic researchers around the world.
What is the structure of an ARA award? Can it be extended?
Awards are structured as one-time unrestricted gifts to the Principal Investigator's academic institution or organization, and can include cash and AWS Promotional Credits. Though this funding is not extendable, applicants can submit new proposals for subsequent calls.
Applying for an award
How do I apply?
Please follow the instructions on the specific CFP you are applying to.
Who is eligible to apply?
Researchers from around the world are encouraged to apply. Please refer to the ARA Program Rules for eligibility.
What are the timelines for proposal submissions and decisions?
We evaluate research proposals and provide decisions via email to all applicants approximately three months after the submission deadline. Please follow the timeline on the specific CFP you are applying to.
What is an Amazon contact and is one required to apply?
An Amazon contact is an Amazon employee who is aware of the proposal, familiar with the Principal Investigator’s research and may be willing to serve as an Amazon research contact for the proposal, if it is selected. An Amazon contact is not required to submit a proposal. While the ARA team is not able to provide an Amazon contact for the PI prior to submission, all funded proposals will be assigned an Amazon research contact by the review panel.
Is it possible to have multiple faculty members on a single proposal?
Each proposal application should be submitted by a single faculty member, who will serve as the Primary PI. One co-PI per proposal can be included in the application form. ARA defines a co-PI as an individual equally accountable for research performance and management of funding. Formal co-PI’s must be a full-time faculty/permanent researcher and meet ARA eligibility requirements. Other members of the research team can and should be mentioned within the proposal.
Is it possible for one faculty member to be on multiple grants?
Principle Investigators can only submit one proposal at each deadline. A Primary PI can be listed as a co-PI on an additional proposal, but must withdraw if the other proposal is selected. It’s also possible that another CFP may decide to fund your research, if it meets the scope of that CFP.
What budget expenses should I include in my proposal submission?
A proposed cash budget is generally expected to support one to two graduate students (or a post-doctoral researcher) for one year, plus some conference travel and equipment. The budget should include a list of expected costs specified in USD and is not required to include administrative overhead costs. The final award amount will be determined by the awards panel. Please refer to the CFP for specific budget guidelines.


Additionally, proposals may include a request for AWS Promotional Credits1. Proposals should include the requested amount, a short justification, a list of AWS products and any AWS Public Datasets to be used in the proposed research. The final amount of free AWS Promotional Credits will be determined by the awards panel.


1. Please note that your use of any AWS Promotional Credit is subject to the general AWS Customer Agreement terms or other terms governing your use of AWS Services (“Agreement”). In the event of a conflict between these Rules and the Agreement, the Agreement will control with respect to your access to and use of the Service Offerings. Additionally, any use of AWS Promotional Credit will be in accordance with and subject to the AWS Promotional Credit Terms & Conditions. In the event of a conflict between these Rules and the AWS Promotional Credit Terms & Conditions, the AWS Promotional Credit Terms & Conditions will govern with respect to any AWS Promotional Credit you receive.
Proposal review process
Who evaluates the proposals and when will I know the outcome?
Project proposals are reviewed by an internal awards panel and the results are communicated approximately three months after the submission deadline. We will communicate the decision to the primary PI listed on each proposal, and will make an announcement on the ARA website. We expect the primary PI to notify the rest of their team about funding decisions.
Will I be able to find out why my proposal was not accepted?
Unfortunately, due to the number of proposals we receive, we are unable to provide detailed reasons a proposal was not accepted.
Award information
What happens after the ARA recipients are announced?
Each project will be assigned an Amazon research contact. The researchers are encouraged to maintain regular communication with their Amazon contact to discuss ongoing research and project progress. We also encourage publishing the outcome of the project and committing any related code to open-source code repositories.
Does Amazon retain any intellectual property and licensing on the material developed during the time period that a student is funded?
ARA funding is distributed as unrestricted gifts to universities. As such, the funding does not result in any transfer or license of any intellectual property rights. Please refer to the ARA Program Rules for more information.
Do recipients have access to Amazon data?
Recipients will have access to Amazon datasets that are already public, such as the Amazon Bin Image Dataset, but not to non-public data.
Does Amazon accept any legal obligation with respect to submitted proposals?
We are happy to review non-confidential project proposals. As such, project proposals shall not contain any confidential information (please do not include any information in your proposal that you or others consider confidential). Amazon does not accept any legal obligation (whether of confidentiality, compensation, return or otherwise) with respect to any proposals. Amazon reserves the right to implement similar ideas in the future without restriction or obligation. Please refer to the ARA Program Rules for more information.
Other
How can I contact the ARA team?
We provide limited email support via research-awards@amazon.com. Due to the volume of emails we receive, we may not be able to respond to questions where the answer is available on the website.
How can I find out about future ARA calls for proposals?
Please email research-awards@amazon.com to be added to the CFP email announcement.
Is the AWS Machine Learning Research Awards (MLRA) part of ARA?
Yes, in 2020 the two programs merged and MLRA now funds awards through ARA, under the AWS AI call for proposal.
Does Amazon provide any other funding opportunities?
Yes, please visit the collaborations page for more information.

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Data Scientist, Prime Video
US, WA, Seattle
Are you interested in shaping the future of entertainment? Prime Video's technology teams are creating best-in-class digital video experience. 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 exclusive access to coverage of live sports. All customers regardless of whether they have a Prime membership or not, can access programming from subscriptions such as Apple TV, Peacock Premium Plus, HBO Max, FOX One, Crunchyroll and MGM+, as well as more than 900 free ad-support (FAST) Channels, rent or buy titles, and enjoy even more content for free with ads. The Prime Video Personalization and Discovery team matches customers with the right content at the right time, at all touch points throughout the content discovery journey. We are looking for a customer-focused, solutions-oriented Data Scientist to help build new data-driven frameworks to understand what makes new personalization and content discovery innovations successful for users and the business. You'll be part of an embedded science team on projects that are fast-paced, challenging, and ultimately influence what millions of customers around the world see when the log into Prime Video. The ideal candidate brings strong problem-solving skills, stakeholder communication skills, and the ability to balance technical rigor with delivery speed and customer impact. You will build cross-functional support within Prime Video, assess business problems, define metrics, and support iterative scientific solutions that balance short-term delivery with long-term science roadmaps. Key job responsibilities - Use advanced statistical and machine learning techniques to extract insights from complex, large-scale data sets - Design and implement end-to-end data science workflows, from data acquisition and cleaning to model development, testing, and deployment - Support scalable, self-service data analyses by building datasets for analytics, reporting and ML use cases - Partner with product stakeholders and senior science peers to identify strategic data-driven opportunities to improve the customer experience - Communicate findings, conclusions, and recommendations to technical and non-technical stakeholders - Stay up-to-date on the latest data science tools, techniques, and best practices and help evangelize them across the organization
Applied Scientist, Amazon Music - Catalog Quality
IN, KA, Bengaluru
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. Learn more at https://www.amazon.com/music. The Music Catalog Quality team at Amazon Music serves a key role in developing solutions to ensure and improve the quality of catalog metadata and content across the music streaming experience. We create solutions that detect, measure, and remediate quality issues in music metadata - including artist information, track attributes, versions, content tags, and provide actionable insights that enable continuous improvement of the catalog. We leverage a host of scientific and engineering technologies to accomplish this mission, including Generative AI, classical ML, Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, and automated data validation pipelines. Key job responsibilities As an Applied Scientist, you will own the design and development of end-to-end systems. You’ll have the opportunity to create technical roadmaps, and drive production level projects that will support Amazon Science. You will work closely with Amazon scientists, and other science interns to develop solutions and deploy them into production. The ideal scientist must have the ability to work with diverse groups of people and cross-functional teams to solve complex business problems. Other responsibilities include: - Collaborate with scientists, engineers, and product managers to define and frame business problems as ML or optimization tasks. - Use machine learning, deep learning, LLMs and Agentic AI techniques to create scalable solutions for business problems - Analyze and extract relevant information from large amounts of Amazon's data to help automate and optimize key processes - Design, development and evaluation of AI models for predictive learning - Research and implement novel machine learning and statistical approaches - Implement scalable data pipelines and model-serving systems. - Analyze experimental results, draw insights, and refine models to improve accuracy and robustness. - Communicate findings and recommendations to technical and non-technical audiences.
Applied Scientist, Amazon Music - Catalog Quality
IN, KA, Bengaluru
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. Learn more at https://www.amazon.com/music. The Music Catalog Quality team at Amazon Music serves a key role in developing solutions to ensure and improve the quality of catalog metadata and content across the music streaming experience. We create solutions that detect, measure, and remediate quality issues in music metadata - including artist information, track attributes, versions, content tags, and provide actionable insights that enable continuous improvement of the catalog. We leverage a host of scientific and engineering technologies to accomplish this mission, including Generative AI, classical ML, Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, and automated data validation pipelines. Key job responsibilities As an Applied Scientist, you will own the design and development of end-to-end systems. You’ll have the opportunity to create technical roadmaps, and drive production level projects that will support Amazon Science. You will work closely with Amazon scientists, and other science interns to develop solutions and deploy them into production. The ideal scientist must have the ability to work with diverse groups of people and cross-functional teams to solve complex business problems. Other responsibilities include: - Collaborate with scientists, engineers, and product managers to define and frame business problems as ML or optimization tasks. - Use machine learning, deep learning, LLMs and Agentic AI techniques to create scalable solutions for business problems - Analyze and extract relevant information from large amounts of Amazon's data to help automate and optimize key processes - Design, development and evaluation of AI models for predictive learning - Research and implement novel machine learning and statistical approaches - Implement scalable data pipelines and model-serving systems. - Analyze experimental results, draw insights, and refine models to improve accuracy and robustness. - Communicate findings and recommendations to technical and non-technical audiences.
Applied Scientist, Amazon Music - Catalog Quality
IN, KA, Bengaluru
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. Learn more at https://www.amazon.com/music. The Music Catalog Quality team at Amazon Music serves a key role in developing solutions to ensure and improve the quality of catalog metadata and content across the music streaming experience. We create solutions that detect, measure, and remediate quality issues in music metadata - including artist information, track attributes, versions, content tags, and provide actionable insights that enable continuous improvement of the catalog. We leverage a host of scientific and engineering technologies to accomplish this mission, including Generative AI, classical ML, Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, and automated data validation pipelines. Key job responsibilities As an Applied Scientist, you will own the design and development of end-to-end systems. You’ll have the opportunity to create technical roadmaps, and drive production level projects that will support Amazon Science. You will work closely with Amazon scientists, and other science interns to develop solutions and deploy them into production. The ideal scientist must have the ability to work with diverse groups of people and cross-functional teams to solve complex business problems. Other responsibilities include: - Collaborate with scientists, engineers, and product managers to define and frame business problems as ML or optimization tasks. - Use machine learning, deep learning, LLMs and Agentic AI techniques to create scalable solutions for business problems - Analyze and extract relevant information from large amounts of Amazon's data to help automate and optimize key processes - Design, development and evaluation of AI models for predictive learning - Research and implement novel machine learning and statistical approaches - Implement scalable data pipelines and model-serving systems. - Analyze experimental results, draw insights, and refine models to improve accuracy and robustness. - Communicate findings and recommendations to technical and non-technical audiences.
Applied Scientist (GenAI/LLM), Sandstone
US, CA, San Diego
Do you want to join an innovative team of scientists and engineers who use terabytes of data and create state-of-the-art Generative AI algorithms to push the boundaries of AI creativity? We are building foundational behavioral models for Amazon Stores using Generative AI, LLMs and Large Model training techniques that fuses general world knowledge, customer shopping behavior and Amazon e-commerce domain knowledge. We are looking for scientists who are passionate about technology, innovation, and customer experience, and are ready to make a lasting impact on the industry using intelligent and transformative AI applications. Working closely with cross-functional teams, you will be an essential part of every stage of AI development, from ideation and design to rigorous testing and successful deployment, ensuring our AI projects drive innovation and provide value for our customers. If you’re fired up about being part of a dynamic, driven team, then this is your moment to join us on this exciting journey! Key job responsibilities In this role you will leverage your background and expertise to lead developing foundational behavioral model for Amazon Stores using Generative AI, LLM and Large Model training techniques. On a day-to-day basis, you will: - Research and implement new algorithms and architectures for generative AI applications. - Optimize model performance and scalability for inference and deployment. - Collaborate with other talented applied scientists and engineers to gather and preprocess large datasets and develop an improved training infrastructure that accelerates innovation. - Experiment with SOTA methods to improve generative AI model quality. - Provide technical expertise and guidance to support the integration of generative AI solutions into various products and services.
Applied Science Manager , Amazon Music Catalog Quality
IN, KA, Bengaluru
The Music Catalog Quality team at Amazon Music serves a key role in developing solutions to ensure and improve the quality of catalog metadata and content across the music streaming experience. We create solutions that detect, measure, and remediate quality issues in music metadata - including artist information, track attributes, versions, content tags, and provide actionable insights that enable continuous improvement of the catalog. We leverage a host of scientific and engineering technologies to accomplish this mission, including Generative AI, classical ML, Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, and automated data validation pipelines. As an Applied Science Manager on the team, you will lead a team of scientists to define and execute a transformative vision for holistic catalog quality measurement, metadata enrichment, and content integrity. Your team will own the science solutions for foundational quality detection frameworks, metadata validation and correction technologies, state-of-the-art algorithms to identify and resolve catalog anomalies (violative content, duplicative/low value content, misattributed tracks, incorrect metadata), and/or agentic AI solutions that help internal teams quickly surface and fix quality issues to ensure customers receive accurate, complete catalog experiences. Key job responsibilities You independently manage a team of scientists. You identify the needs of your team and effectively grow, hire, and promote scientists to maintain a high-performing team. You have a broad understanding of scientific techniques, several of which may fall out of your specific job function. You define the strategic vision for your team. You establish a roadmap and successfully deliver scientific solutions that innovate on catalog quality detection, metadata enrichment, and content integrity. You define clear goals for your team and effectively prioritize, balancing short-term quality improvements and long-term innovation in catalog intelligence. You establish clear and effective metrics and scientific process to enforce consistent, high-quality artifact delivery and measurable catalog quality improvements. You proactively identify risks and bring them to the attention of your manager, customers, and stakeholders with plans for mitigation before they become roadblocks. You know when to escalate. You communicate ideas effectively, both verbally and in writing, to all types of audiences. You author strategic documentation for your team. You communicate issues and options with leaders in such a way that facilitates understanding and that leads to a decision. You work successfully with customers, leaders, and engineering teams. You foster a constructive dialogue, harmonize discordant views, and lead the resolution of contentious issues. About the team We are a team of scientists and MLEs focused on music catalog quality and metadata intelligence. You will work with colleagues with deep expertise in ML, NLP, CV, Gen AI, and data quality systems with a diverse range of backgrounds. We partner closely with top-notch engineers, product managers, content operations teams, and other scientists with expertise in music metadata, content classification, and building scalable modeling and software solutions that keep the Amazon Music catalog accurate, complete, and trustworthy.
Applied Scientist (GenAI/LLM), Sandstone
US, CA, San Diego
Do you want to join an innovative team of scientists and engineers who use terabytes of data and create state-of-the-art Generative AI algorithms to push the boundaries of AI creativity? We are building foundational behavioral models for Amazon Stores using Generative AI, LLMs and Large Model training techniques that fuses general world knowledge, customer shopping behavior and Amazon e-commerce domain knowledge. We are looking for scientists who are passionate about technology, innovation, and customer experience, and are ready to make a lasting impact on the industry using intelligent and transformative AI applications. Working closely with cross-functional teams, you will be an essential part of every stage of AI development, from ideation and design to rigorous testing and successful deployment, ensuring our AI projects drive innovation and provide value for our customers. If you’re fired up about being part of a dynamic, driven team, then this is your moment to join us on this exciting journey! Key job responsibilities In this role you will leverage your background and expertise to lead developing foundational behavioral model for Amazon Stores using Generative AI, LLM and Large Model training techniques. On a day-to-day basis, you will: - Research and implement new algorithms and architectures for generative AI applications. - Optimize model performance and scalability for inference and deployment. - Collaborate with other talented applied scientists and engineers to gather and preprocess large datasets and develop an improved training infrastructure that accelerates innovation. - Experiment with SOTA methods to improve generative AI model quality. - Provide technical expertise and guidance to support the integration of generative AI solutions into various products and services.
Applied Scientist (GenAI/LLM), Sandstone
US, WA, Seattle
Do you want to join an innovative team of scientists and engineers who use terabytes of data and create state-of-the-art Generative AI algorithms to push the boundaries of AI creativity? We are building foundational behavioral models for Amazon Stores using Generative AI, LLMs and Large Model training techniques that fuses general world knowledge, customer shopping behavior and Amazon e-commerce domain knowledge. We are looking for scientists who are passionate about technology, innovation, and customer experience, and are ready to make a lasting impact on the industry using intelligent and transformative AI applications. Working closely with cross-functional teams, you will be an essential part of every stage of AI development, from ideation and design to rigorous testing and successful deployment, ensuring our AI projects drive innovation and provide value for our customers. If you’re fired up about being part of a dynamic, driven team, then this is your moment to join us on this exciting journey! Key job responsibilities In this role you will leverage your background and expertise to lead developing foundational behavioral model for Amazon Stores using Generative AI, LLM and Large Model training techniques. On a day-to-day basis, you will: - Research and implement new algorithms and architectures for generative AI applications. - Optimize model performance and scalability for inference and deployment. - Collaborate with other talented applied scientists and engineers to gather and preprocess large datasets and develop an improved training infrastructure that accelerates innovation. - Experiment with SOTA methods to improve generative AI model quality. - Provide technical expertise and guidance to support the integration of generative AI solutions into various products and services.
Supply Chain Sr Data Scientist - Amazon Carreiras, Supply Chain & Integration
BR, SP, Sao Paulo
Esta é uma posição de colaborador individual, com base em nosso escritório de São Paulo. Procuramos uma pessoa dinâmica, analítica, inovadora, orientada para a prática e com foco inabalável no cliente. Na Amazon, nosso objetivo é exceder as expectativas dos clientes, garantindo que seus pedidos sejam entregues com máxima rapidez, precisão e eficiência de custo. A determinação da rota de cada pacote é realizada por sistemas complexos, que precisam acompanhar o crescimento acelerado e a complexidade da malha logística no Brasil. Diante desse cenário, a equipe de Otimização de Supply Chain está à procura de um cientista de dados experiente, capaz de desenvolver modelos, ferramentas e processos para garantir confiabilidade, agilidade, eficiência de custos e a melhor utilização dos ativos. O candidato ideal terá sólidas habilidades quantitativas e experiência com conjuntos de dados complexos, sendo capaz de identificar tendências, inovar processos e tomar decisões baseadas em dados, considerando a cadeia de suprimentos de ponta a ponta. Key job responsibilities * Executar projetos de melhoria contínua na malha logística, aproveitando boas práticas de outros países e/ou desenvolvendo novos modelos. * Desenvolver modelos de otimização e cenários para planejamentos logísticos. * Criar modelos de otimização voltados para a execução de eventos e períodos de alta demanda. Automatizar processos manuais para melhorar a produtividade da equipe. * Auditar operações, configurações sistêmicas e processos que possam impactar custos, produtividade e velocidade de entregas. * Realizar benchmarks com outros países para identificar melhores práticas e processos avançados, conectando-os às operações no Brasil. About the team Nosso time é composto por engenheiros de dados, gerentes de projetos e cientistas de dados, todos dedicados a criar soluções escaláveis e inovadoras que suportem e otimizem as operações logísticas da Amazon no Brasil. Nossa missão é garantir a eficiência de todas as etapas da cadeia de suprimentos, desde a primeira até a última milha, ajudando a Amazon a entregar resultados com agilidade, precisão e a um custo competitivo, especialmente em um ambiente de rápido crescimento e complexidade.
Member of Technical Staff, Artificial General Intelligence
US, CA, Sunnyvale
The Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) team is looking for a passionate, talented, and inventive Member of Technical Staff with a strong deep learning background, to build industry-leading Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) technology with Large Language Models (LLMs) and multimodal systems. Key job responsibilities As a Member of Technical Staff with the AGI team, you will support the development of algorithms and modeling techniques, to advance the state of the art with LLMs. You will support the foundational model development in an applied research role, including model training, dataset design, and pre- and post-training optimization. Your work will directly impact our customers in the form of products and services that make use of GenAI technology. You will leverage Amazon’s heterogeneous data sources and large-scale computing resources to accelerate advances in LLMs. About the team The AGI team has a mission to push the envelope in GenAI with LLMs and multimodal systems, in order to provide the best-possible experience for our customers.
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