Every time a customer clicks "Add to Cart" on Amazon, they're trusting us to have already answered a deceptively hard question: out of hundreds of competing offers for the same product, which one is actually the best choice for them right now? Our team owns the algorithm that answers that question - billions of times a day, across every product on Amazon.
As a Data Scientist on this team, you'll help make that algorithm smarter. You'll work on the models and signals that rank and surface offers in real time - weighing price, seller performance, fulfillment speed, customer trust signals, and more. The work is technically deep: you're not running one-off analyses, you're building systems that operate at internet scale and directly affect what customers buy and how sellers compete.
You'll run experiments, develop predictive models, and partner with engineers and product managers to turn your findings into features that ship. If you enjoy problems where getting the answer right really matters - for customers, for sellers, and for the business - you'll find a lot to work on here.
Key job responsibilities
Build and own machine learning models that rank and recommend offers to customers across Amazon's product catalog, from feature engineering through production deployment
Design and analyze A/B experiments to measure the impact of algorithm changes on customer experience, seller competition, and business outcomes
Mine large-scale datasets to identify patterns and signals - seller behavior, pricing dynamics, fulfillment performance - that improve how we predict the best offer for each customer
Translate ambiguous business questions into well-defined data science problems, and communicate findings clearly to engineers, product managers, and leadership
Partner with software engineers to operationalize models at scale, ensuring they perform reliably under high-traffic, low-latency conditions
Monitor model performance over time, diagnose degradation, and iterate to keep ranking quality high as the marketplace evolves
A day in the life
You'll spend your time building and iterating on models that rank offers for hundreds of millions of Amazon shoppers - checking experiment results, digging into datasets to find better signals, and working with engineers to get models into production.
Day to day, you'll partner with product managers and engineers to turn business questions into data science problems: Why is this ranking signal underperforming? What's driving a shift in customer behavior? Is this change actually better for customers?
Your work directly shapes what customers see and how sellers compete - at a scale few roles can match.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
- 1+ years of data querying languages (e.g. SQL), scripting languages (e.g. Python) or statistical/mathematical software (e.g. R, SAS, Matlab, etc.) experience
- 2+ years of data/research scientist, statistician or quantitative analyst in an internet-based company with complex and big data sources experience
- 1+ years of creating or contributing to mathematical textbooks, research papers, or educational content experience
- Master's degree in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics (STEM), or experience working in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics (STEM)
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Ph.D. in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics (STEM)
- Knowledge of statistical packages and business intelligence tools such as SPSS, SAS, S-PLUS, or R
- Knowledge of machine learning concepts and their application to reasoning and problem-solving
- Experience with clustered data processing (e.g., Hadoop, Spark, Map-reduce, and Hive)
- Experience working with or evaluating AI systems
- Experience applying quantitative analysis to solve business problems and making data-driven business decisions
- Experience effectively communicating complex concepts through written and verbal communication
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, WA, Seattle - 108,300.00 - 160,000.00 USD annually
