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About This Role
DESCRIPTION
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Amazon's PRISM team is seeking an innovative Applied Scientist to build the intelligence layer powering the Catalog Diagnostic Assistant — a conversational AI agent that unifies Amazon's fragmented catalog diagnostic experience into a single natural\-language interface. Rather than switching between legacy tools, internal users ask CDA a question in plain language and CDA coordinates across data sources, reasons through complex diagnostic workflows, and returns a combined answer with source citations.
This role sits at the intersection of Generative AI, agentic architectures, and large\-scale information retrieval applied to the world's largest product catalog. You will design and build the scientific core of an agent that autonomously investigates catalog anomalies — diagnosing why products aren't live, why attributes aren't publishing, or why matching decisions went wrong — across billions of products, petabytes of multimodal data, and dozens of marketplaces.
You will be the founding scientist for the CDA product, defining the research agenda for agentic diagnostics, developing novel approaches to skill\-based reasoning and tool orchestration, and owning the full lifecycle from problem formulation through production deployment at Amazon scale. You will pioneer advanced GenAI solutions that power next\-generation agentic experiences, working in a collaborative environment where you can experiment with massive data from the world's largest product catalog and tackle problems at the frontier of AI research.
Key job responsibilities
- Formulate open research problems at the intersection of GenAI, agentic reasoning, and large\-scale catalog diagnostics — defining how an autonomous agent should decompose, investigate, and explain complex catalog issues
- Design and develop novel agentic architectures (skill planning, tool selection, multi\-step reasoning, chain\-of\-thought verification) that enable CDA to autonomously resolve diagnostic workflows that traditionally required manual expert investigation
- Build and optimize retrieval\-augmented generation (RAG) systems over Amazon's catalog data, ensuring the agent retrieves the right evidence from the right data sources to ground its diagnostic answers
- Advance the science of efficient model deployment — developing distillation, compression, and LLM serving optimization strategies that preserve diagnostic reasoning quality in production\-grade architectures while reducing latency and cost
- Make frontier models reliable for autonomous decisions — advancing uncertainty calibration, confidence estimation, and interpretability methods so CDA's agentic diagnoses can be trusted at scale
- Own the full research lifecycle from problem formulation through production deployment — designing rigorous experiments, iterating rapidly, and seeing your research directly improve diagnostic accuracy and coverage
- Partner closely with CDA engineers to translate research prototypes into production systems serving thousands of daily diagnostic sessions
- Shape the team's research vision by defining technical roadmaps that balance foundational scientific inquiry with measurable product impact
- Mentor engineers on advanced ML/GenAI techniques, experimental design, and scientific rigor
About the team
We are a GenAI science team within Amazon's Selection and Catalog Systems (ASCS) organization. Our mission is to advance state\-of\-the\-art Generative AI to deeply understand, uniquely identify, and intelligently diagnose every product at Amazon scale. We push the boundaries of multimodal LLMs, agentic systems, and generative AI to solve foundational catalog challenges — from product identity and semantic matching to automated catalog diagnostics and intelligent catalog analytics.
Our scientists work across multiple high\-impact problem spaces: establishing canonical product identity across billions of items, powering next\-generation agentic experiences for catalog operations, and building AI systems that make Amazon's catalog self\-diagnosing and self\-healing. We operate at the frontier of AI research applied at unprecedented scale — petabytes of multimodal data, millions of sellers, dozens of languages, and infinite product diversity.
This is a collaborative, fast\-moving environment where you can experiment with massive data from the world's largest product catalog, tackle problems at the frontier of AI research, rapidly implement and deploy your ideas at scale, and publish your findings at top venues.BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
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- PhD, or Master's degree and 4\+ years of CS, CE, ML or related field experience
- Experience programming in Java, C\+\+, Python or related language
- 2\+ years of building machine learning models or developing algorithms for business application experience
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
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- Experience in developing and deploying LLMs in production on GPUs, Neuron, TPU or other AI acceleration hardware, or experience with Machine Learning and Large Language Model fundamentals, including architecture, training/inference lifecycles, and optimization of model execution
- Experience with explainable machine learning and artificial intelligence methodologies and tools
- Experience in written and verbal communication with the ability to present complex technical information in a clear and concise manner to executives and non\-technical leaders
- Strong experimental design skills and statistical analysis expertise
- Experience with LLMs, VLMs, foundation models, or large\-scale deep learning systems—including multimodal pretraining, fine\-tuning, RLHF, prompt engineering, or agentic architectures
- Track record of deploying ML models at scale in production environments processing billions of data points
- Publications in top\-tier venues such as NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, ICCV, EMNLP, ACL, NAACL, COLING, KDD, SIGMOD, WWW, AAAI, or similar
Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status, disability, or other legally protected status.
Los Angeles County applicants: Job duties for this position include: work safely and cooperatively with other employees, supervisors, and staff; adhere to standards of excellence despite stressful conditions; communicate effectively and respectfully with employees, supervisors, and staff to ensure exceptional customer service; and follow all federal, state, and local laws and Company policies. Criminal history may have a direct, adverse, and negative relationship with some of the material job duties of this position. These include the duties and responsibilities listed above, as well as the abilities to adhere to company policies, exercise sound judgment, effectively manage stress and work safely and respectfully with others, exhibit trustworthiness and professionalism, and safeguard business operations and the Company’s reputation. Pursuant to the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
Our inclusive culture empowers Amazonians to deliver the best results for our customers. If you have a disability and need a workplace accommodation or adjustment during the application and hiring process, including support for the interview or onboarding process, please visit https://amazon.jobs/content/en/how\-we\-hire/accommodations for more information. If the country/region you’re applying in isn’t listed, please contact your Recruiting Partner.
The base salary range for this position is listed below. Your Amazon package will include sign\-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs). Final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience, qualifications, and location. Amazon also offers comprehensive benefits including health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life \& AD\&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans, EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line, Flexible Spending Accounts, Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage), 401(k) matching, paid time off, and parental leave. Learn more about our benefits at https://amazon.jobs/en/benefits.
USA, CA, Sunnyvale \- 171,600\.00 \- 222,200\.00 USD annually
Salary Context
This $171K-$222K range is above the 75th percentile for Research Scientist roles in our dataset (median: $183K across 83 roles with salary data).
Role Details
About This Role
Research Scientists push the boundaries of what AI can do. They design experiments, develop novel architectures, publish papers, and translate research breakthroughs into production capabilities. This is where the fundamental advances happen, from attention mechanisms to diffusion models to reasoning chains.
The work is intellectually demanding and often ambiguous. You might spend months on an approach that doesn't pan out. The best research scientists combine deep mathematical intuition with engineering pragmatism. They know when to go deep on theory and when to run experiments. They read papers voraciously and can spot incremental contributions from genuine breakthroughs.
Across the 3,708 AI roles we're tracking, Research Scientist positions make up 3% of the market. At Amazon.com, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.
Research Scientist roles are concentrated at major AI labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta FAIR) and well-funded AI startups. The competition is intense. PhD is effectively required for most positions, and publication track record matters. Compensation is among the highest in AI, reflecting both the scarcity of talent and the strategic importance of research breakthroughs.
What the Work Looks Like
A typical week includes: reading and discussing recent papers with your team, designing and running experiments on multi-GPU clusters, analyzing results and iterating on hypotheses, writing up findings for internal review or publication, and collaborating with engineering teams to productionize promising results. The ratio of thinking to coding is higher than in engineering roles.
Research Scientist roles are concentrated at major AI labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta FAIR) and well-funded AI startups. The competition is intense. PhD is effectively required for most positions, and publication track record matters. Compensation is among the highest in AI, reflecting both the scarcity of talent and the strategic importance of research breakthroughs.
Skills Required
PhD strongly preferred for most roles. Deep expertise in a specific area (NLP, computer vision, reinforcement learning, multimodal) is expected. PyTorch is the standard. Publication track record matters. Strong mathematical foundations in linear algebra, probability, optimization, and information theory are assumed.
Beyond the fundamentals, companies value experience with large-scale distributed training, novel architecture design, and the ability to bridge theory and practice. Understanding of current frontier topics (reasoning, multimodal, long-context, alignment) is essential. Code quality matters more than many researchers expect. Labs want researchers who can implement their ideas cleanly.
Strong research postings specify the research area, mention the team you'd join, and describe the problems they're working on. They often list recent publications from the team. Vague 'AI research' postings without specifics usually mean the company wants to sound impressive but doesn't have a real research agenda.
Compensation Benchmarks
Research Scientist roles pay a median of $222,200 based on 197 positions with disclosed compensation. Mid-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $200,000. This role's midpoint ($196K) sits 11% below the category median. Disclosed range: $171K to $222K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $217,500. Top-quartile compensation starts at $272,100. The 90th percentile reaches $325,000. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($300,000) and Research Engineer ($280,000). By seniority level: Entry: $120,000; Mid: $200,000; Senior: $230,000; Director: $272,150; VP: $250,000.
Amazon.com AI Hiring
Amazon.com has 97 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across Research Scientist, AI/ML Engineer, Data Scientist, AI Product Manager. Positions span Sunnyvale, CA, US, Culver City, CA, US, San Francisco, CA, US. Compensation range: $97K - $327K.
Location Context
Across all AI roles, 14% (508 positions) offer remote work, while 3,180 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (1,045 roles, $220,000 median); San Francisco (810 roles, $277,088 median); Los Angeles (397 roles, $215,000 median).
Career Path
Common paths into Research Scientist roles include PhD Student, Research Engineer, Postdoc.
From here, career progression typically leads toward Research Lead, Distinguished Scientist, VP of Research.
The PhD is the entry point for most paths. Choose your advisor and research area carefully since they'll define your first industry position. Publish consistently, contribute to open-source projects in your area, and build relationships at conferences. Industry research offers better compensation and compute resources than academia, but the pressure to show product impact is real.
What to Expect in Interviews
Research interviews are multi-stage: a research talk (present your best paper), technical deep-dives on your methodology, and often a 'research proposal' exercise where you design an experiment to test a hypothesis. Coding rounds test implementation ability alongside theoretical knowledge. Be prepared to implement a paper from scratch and discuss the design choices the authors made. Strong candidates can critique papers constructively and identify gaps in experimental methodology.
When evaluating opportunities: Strong research postings specify the research area, mention the team you'd join, and describe the problems they're working on. They often list recent publications from the team. Vague 'AI research' postings without specifics usually mean the company wants to sound impressive but doesn't have a real research agenda.
AI Hiring Overview
The AI job market has 3,708 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 102 entry-level, 1,705 mid-level, 1,469 senior, and 432 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 14% of the market (508 positions). The remaining 3,180 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $217,500. Top-quartile compensation starts at $272,100. The 90th percentile reaches $325,000. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($300,000 median, 21 roles); Research Engineer ($280,000 median, 147 roles); AI Architect ($254,798 median, 67 roles).
Research Scientist roles are concentrated at major AI labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta FAIR) and well-funded AI startups. The competition is intense. PhD is effectively required for most positions, and publication track record matters. Compensation is among the highest in AI, reflecting both the scarcity of talent and the strategic importance of research breakthroughs.
The AI Job Market Today
The AI job market spans 3,708 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (2,605), Data Scientist (310), AI Software Engineer (259). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.
The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (102) are outnumbered by mid-level (1,705) and senior (1,469) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 432 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 14% of all AI roles (508 positions), with 3,180 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.
AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $217,500. Top-quartile roles start at $272,100, and the 90th percentile reaches $325,000. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.
Category matters for compensation. AI Safety roles lead at $300,000 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $140,000. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.
The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (1,890 postings), Aws (1,103 postings), Azure (877 postings), Rag (855 postings), Gcp (631 postings), Prompt Engineering (560 postings), Pytorch (545 postings), Claude (498 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.
Frequently Asked Questions
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