Amazon's Demand Side Platform (DSP) helps advertisers reach audiences across the web, and we are tackling one of the hardest open problems in this space: making performance advertising work for non-endemic advertisers - brands in financial services, telco, auto, travel, and direct-to-consumer that sell outside of Amazon. As an Applied Scientist III on the Demand Technology team, you will own the science behind conversion prediction, bidding, ranking, and measurement for these advertisers, where standard signals are sparse and new modeling approaches must be invented. This is a company-level priority with significant room for scientific impact, and the models you build will directly determine whether advertisers see the outcomes that keep them investing on our platform.
Key job responsibilities
- Own the applied-science roadmap for one or more non-endemic performance workstreams - from problem framing and experiment design through offline validation, online experimentation, and production launch.
- Design and improve machine learning models for sourcing, ranking, and response prediction that optimize toward advertiser outcomes such as cost per acquisition and return on ad spend.
- Define measurement methodology - including incrementality, weighted conversions, and off-Amazon attribution - that correctly values an impression when the conversion happens outside Amazon.
- Partner with engineering, product, and sales-facing teams on deep dives into real enterprise advertiser accounts, turning account-level learnings into scalable model and system improvements.
- Mentor scientists and engineers across the organization, publish internal best practices, and contribute to the broader scientific community through peer reviews and publications.
A day in the life
You might start your morning analyzing offline experiment results for a new conversion-prediction model, then join a design review with engineers on how to serve that model in the real-time bidding pipeline. After lunch launch, you could be working with a product manager to define success metrics for a non-endemic advertiser segment, followed by a code review for a teammate's feature-engineering change. You regularly carve out time to read recent research on causal inference or data-efficient learning and assess whether new techniques could improve your team's models.
About the team
We are a lean team of applied scientists and software development engineers within Amazon DSP, focused on strategic initiatives that have not had significant investment before. We work close to the customer - partnering directly with product and sales-facing teams to understand advertiser needs and translate them into scalable scientific solutions. If you want to shape the direction of a high-priority problem space where your ideas move quickly from whiteboard to production, we would love to hear from you.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
- 3+ years of building machine learning models for business application experience
- PhD, or Master's degree and 6+ years of applied research experience
- Experience programming in Java, C++, Python or related language
- Experience with neural deep learning methods and machine learning
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Experience with modeling tools such as R, scikit-learn, Spark MLLib, MxNet, Tensorflow, numpy, scipy etc.
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, NY, New York - 183,800.00 - 248,700.00 USD annually
