Applied Scientist

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Job description

Interested in driving thought leadership on customers discovering Private Brands? We're building intelligent data models and NLP algorithms that will transform digital marketing discovery for Private Brands at Amazon. Come join us!

We are looking for a scientist to lead innovation for our discovery efforts across all placements and all page types by developing innovative algorithms to determine the right content to serve within the right context. This role has a significant global revenue impact. At the heart of our discovery engine are systems for optimizing query sourcing, merchandising allocations, experimentation infrastructure, machine learning methods for inference and metrics-driven closed loop optimizations. This role is responsible for innovation aimed at step-changing these systems, and accelerating the pace of Machine Learning. In addition, this scientist will be required to invent new approaches in solving challenging problems like cold start product recommendation, real-time learning customer intent and personalizing contents.

To be successful in this role you will need to be comfortable defining a long-term science vision for discovery across placements, and translating that direction into specific plans for applied scientists, as well as engineering and product teams. This is a role that combines science leadership, organizational ability, technical strength, product focus and business understanding. The ideal candidate will be an independent thinker who can make convincing, information-based arguments. This individual will be able to work equally well with Science, Engineering, Economics and business teams. This person will have sound judgment and help recruit and groom high caliber science talent.

* PhD or equivalent Master's Degree plus 4+ years of experience in CS, CE, ML or related field
* Experience programming in Java, C++, Python or related language

Responsibilities:

* Drive collaborative research and creative problem solving
* Constructively critique peer research and mentor junior scientists and engineers
* Create experiments and prototype implementations of new learning algorithms and prediction techniques
* Collaborate with engineering teams to design and implement software solutions for science problems
* Contribute to progress of the Amazon and broader research communities by producing publications
* MS/Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics or a related quantitative field
* 4+ years of practical experience applying ML to solve complex problems in an applied environment
* Significant peer-reviewed scientific contributions in premier journals and conferences
* Strong CS fundamentals in data structures, problem solving, algorithm design and complexity analysis
* Experience with defining research and development practices in an applied environment
* Proven track record in technically leading and mentoring scientists
* Superior verbal and written communication and presentation skills, ability to convey rigorous mathematical concepts and considerations to non-experts