The Demand Utilization team within Amazon Advertising is responsible for determining which ads to serve when hundreds of millions of shoppers search for products on Amazon. We sit at the intersection of customer intent understanding and advertiser value, solving one of the most complex matching problems in the industry, identifying the right ad, for the right shopper, at the right moment, across one of the world's largest product catalogs. Our systems deliver billions of ad impressions and millions of clicks daily under strict relevance and latency constraints.
We are looking for a Principal Applied Scientist to set the technical vision and drive the science strategy for our ad retrieval and ranking systems. This is a high-impact leadership role where you will tackle unsolved problems at the frontier of large-scale information retrieval, natural language understanding, and multi-objective optimization, all operating in real time at Amazon scale.
You will work on challenges such as:
- Modeling shopper intent from sparse, ambiguous, and multi-modal signals
- Designing retrieval architectures that balance relevance, advertiser and shopper experience across billions of candidate ads
- Advancing personalization and cold-start strategies for new advertisers and emerging product categories
This is a role for a scientist who wants to shape the future of performance advertising through rigorous research applied to real-world systems that directly impact Amazon's customers, sellers, and business.
Key job responsibilities
Key Responsibilities:
- Own the science roadmap for ad retrieval and ranking within Demand Utilization, defining multi-year research priorities aligned with business goals
- Lead the design and development of novel machine learning models and algorithms for relevance, intent understanding, and ad selection at scale
- Drive end-to-end execution from problem formulation and experimentation through production deployment, measuring impact on shopper and advertiser outcomes
- Mentor and elevate a team of applied scientists and research engineers, raising the technical bar and fostering a culture of scientific rigor
- Collaborate cross-functionally with product, engineering, and business leaders to translate science capabilities into product strategy
- Represent Amazon externally through publications at top-tier venues, patents, and participation in the broader ML/IR research community
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
- PhD or MS in Computer Science, Statistics, or related field.
- 8+ years of applied ML experience in deploying AI solutions to customer facing products.
- Track record of delivering large-scale and high-quality AI solutions.
- Experience in appling AI to deliver on business goals.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Experience shipping successful large-scale search or recommendation systems.
- Experience partnering with engineering teams to ensure AI solutions meet latency requirements.
- Experience in influencing product strategy across a line of business.
- Evidence of producing internal or external publications that motivate new lines of research.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
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, Palo Alto - 228,700.00 - 309,400.00 USD annually
