The picture is a 3 way horizontal split with images from top to bottom from Columbia University, Georgia Tech, and USC
Amazon is increasing its commitment to the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) program by expanding its partnership with Columbia, and by initiating new multi-year SURE program commitments with Georgia Tech and the University of Southern California.

Amazon expands SURE program to boost diversity in STEM education

New programs with Georgia Tech and the University of Southern California are established; existing Columbia University program expands.

The lack of diversity in STEM fields and the way it hinders innovation have been well established. But seeing the numbers can still be eye-opening: According to the National Science Board’s State of US Science and Engineering 2022 report, in 2019, women represented 48% of the employed US population, but only “about one-third of the STEM workforce,” and that Blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians or Alaska Natives collectively represented 30% of the employed US population, but just 23% of the total STEM workforce.

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The report also notes that strengthening STEM education efforts in the US is “critical to maintaining the US position as a lead performer” in the science and technology realm.

Last year, in an effort to address these inequities, Columbia Engineering and Amazon announced the creation of the Columbia-Amazon Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) program aimed at increasing diversity and inclusiveness in technology fields.

Now, building off the success of that initial program — 74% of surveyed undergraduates in that Columbia-Amazon program said it exceeded or far exceeded expectations — Amazon today announced it is increasing its commitment to the SURE program by expanding its SURE partnership with Columbia, and by initiating new multi-year SURE program commitments with two other top-tier universities, Georgia Tech and the University of Southern California (USC).

“Amazon is excited to expand our commitment to SURE partnerships with top US academic institutions with the goal of enriching the diversity of our national STEM talent pool,” said Prem Natarajan, Alexa AI vice president of natural understanding. “Each year, SURE internship programs will provide more than one hundred undergraduate students from historically underrepresented backgrounds the opportunity to participate in research initiatives at top academic institutions. The students will also have the opportunity to receive guidance and mentorship from university faculty members and from scientists at Amazon.”

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The inaugural 2021 summer instance of the Columbia-Amazon SURE program provided 26 students, primarily from historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-serving institutions, and tribal colleges and universities, opportunities to conduct research in top-tier laboratories at Columbia and engage with professionals at Amazon. This year, the program will expand to 50 students for a 10-week program, as part of Amazon’s multi-year commitment to the initiative. Amazon will also increase the opportunities for these SURE alumni by funding five master’s fellowships for graduate studies.

"Columbia Engineering is excited to expand our successful partnership with Amazon, which creates new university-industry collaboration models with a goal to broadening the pipeline in STEM fields," said Shih-Fu Chang, interim dean of Columbia Engineering. “This generous multi-year support will allow us to explore and validate novel approaches to widening our STEM talent pool over a longer period."

Georgia Tech’s SURE program was founded in 1992 by the university’s Center for Engineering Education and Diversity (CEED). Over the past 30 years, the program has supported more than 500 students, with 75% ultimately attending graduate school to pursue master’s or doctorate degrees. This 10-week summer research program will support underrepresented minority and women students in conducting research within Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering and College of Computing for 2022 and 2023.

“Amazon’s partnership with CEED will enable Georgia Tech to double the number of students from across the nation who participate in SURE,” said Felicia Benton-Johnson, CEED director and assistant dean. “We are grateful to Amazon for its commitment to growing the number of underrepresented minorities in STEM fields.”

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The USC-Amazon SURE Program will provide undergraduate students with the opportunity to spend eight weeks in Los Angeles working on cutting-edge research projects in artificial intelligence, computer science and engineering, and robotics. Amazon will support 30 students in this program. The USC-Amazon SURE program allows undergraduate students from underrepresented backgrounds to develop their research skills under the supervision of Viterbi faculty and current PhD students.

“Amazon is one of the largest employers of USC Viterbi alumni,” said Kelly Goulis, senior associate dean for Student Affairs. “We are honored that they have chosen to collaborate with us on the key goal to ensure that all students have the opportunity to work on leading-edge research, particularly research that is focusing on solving some of the world’s greatest challenges.”

To learn more about each institution’s program, and application deadlines, please visit the links below:

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IN, KA, Bengaluru
Interested to build the next generation Financial systems that can handle billions of dollars in transactions? Interested to build highly scalable next generation systems that could utilize Amazon Cloud? Massive data volume + complex business rules in a highly distributed and service oriented architecture, a world class information collection and delivery challenge. Our challenge is to deliver the software systems which accurately capture, process, and report on the huge volume of financial transactions that are generated each day as millions of customers make purchases, as thousands of Vendors and Partners are paid, as inventory moves in and out of warehouses, as commissions are calculated, and as taxes are collected in hundreds of jurisdictions worldwide. Key job responsibilities • Understand the business and discover actionable insights from large volumes of data through application of machine learning, statistics or causal inference. • Analyse and extract relevant information from large amounts of Amazon’s historical transactions data to help automate and optimize key processes • Research, develop and implement novel machine learning and statistical approaches for anomaly, theft, fraud, abusive and wasteful transactions detection. • Use machine learning and analytical techniques to create scalable solutions for business problems. • Identify new areas where machine learning can be applied for solving business problems. • Partner with developers and business teams to put your models in production. • Mentor other scientists and engineers in the use of ML techniques. A day in the life • Understand the business and discover actionable insights from large volumes of data through application of machine learning, statistics or causal inference. • Analyse and extract relevant information from large amounts of Amazon’s historical transactions data to help automate and optimize key processes • Research, develop and implement novel machine learning and statistical approaches for anomaly, theft, fraud, abusive and wasteful transactions detection. • Use machine learning and analytical techniques to create scalable solutions for business problems. • Identify new areas where machine learning can be applied for solving business problems. • Partner with developers and business teams to put your models in production. • Mentor other scientists and engineers in the use of ML techniques. About the team The FinAuto TFAW(theft, fraud, abuse, waste) team is part of FGBS Org and focuses on building applications utilizing machine learning models to identify and prevent theft, fraud, abusive and wasteful(TFAW) financial transactions across Amazon. Our mission is to prevent every single TFAW transaction. As a Machine Learning Scientist in the team, you will be driving the TFAW Sciences roadmap, conduct research to develop state-of-the-art solutions through a combination of data mining, statistical and machine learning techniques, and coordinate with Engineering team to put these models into production. You will need to collaborate effectively with internal stakeholders, cross-functional teams to solve problems, create operational efficiencies, and deliver successfully against high organizational standards.
IN, KA, Bengaluru
Interested to build the next generation Financial systems that can handle billions of dollars in transactions? Interested to build highly scalable next generation systems that could utilize Amazon Cloud? Massive data volume + complex business rules in a highly distributed and service oriented architecture, a world class information collection and delivery challenge. Our challenge is to deliver the software systems which accurately capture, process, and report on the huge volume of financial transactions that are generated each day as millions of customers make purchases, as thousands of Vendors and Partners are paid, as inventory moves in and out of warehouses, as commissions are calculated, and as taxes are collected in hundreds of jurisdictions worldwide. Key job responsibilities • Understand the business and discover actionable insights from large volumes of data through application of machine learning, statistics or causal inference. • Analyse and extract relevant information from large amounts of Amazon’s historical transactions data to help automate and optimize key processes • Research, develop and implement novel machine learning and statistical approaches for anomaly, theft, fraud, abusive and wasteful transactions detection. • Use machine learning and analytical techniques to create scalable solutions for business problems. • Identify new areas where machine learning can be applied for solving business problems. • Partner with developers and business teams to put your models in production. • Mentor other scientists and engineers in the use of ML techniques. A day in the life • Understand the business and discover actionable insights from large volumes of data through application of machine learning, statistics or causal inference. • Analyse and extract relevant information from large amounts of Amazon’s historical transactions data to help automate and optimize key processes • Research, develop and implement novel machine learning and statistical approaches for anomaly, theft, fraud, abusive and wasteful transactions detection. • Use machine learning and analytical techniques to create scalable solutions for business problems. • Identify new areas where machine learning can be applied for solving business problems. • Partner with developers and business teams to put your models in production. • Mentor other scientists and engineers in the use of ML techniques. About the team The FinAuto TFAW(theft, fraud, abuse, waste) team is part of FGBS Org and focuses on building applications utilizing machine learning models to identify and prevent theft, fraud, abusive and wasteful(TFAW) financial transactions across Amazon. Our mission is to prevent every single TFAW transaction. As a Machine Learning Scientist in the team, you will be driving the TFAW Sciences roadmap, conduct research to develop state-of-the-art solutions through a combination of data mining, statistical and machine learning techniques, and coordinate with Engineering team to put these models into production. You will need to collaborate effectively with internal stakeholders, cross-functional teams to solve problems, create operational efficiencies, and deliver successfully against high organizational standards.
IN, KA, Bengaluru
Amazon Health Services (One Medical) About Us: At Health AI, we're revolutionizing healthcare delivery through innovative AI-enabled solutions. As part of Amazon Health Services and One Medical, we're on a mission to make quality healthcare more accessible while improving patient outcomes. Our work directly impacts millions of lives by empowering patients and enabling healthcare providers to deliver more meaningful care. Role Overview: We're seeking an Applied Scientist to join our dynamic team in building state of the art AI/ML solutions for healthcare. This role offers a unique opportunity to work at the intersection of artificial intelligence and healthcare, developing solutions that will shape the future of medical services delivery. Key job responsibilities • Lead end-to-end development of AI/ML solutions for Amazon Health organization, including Amazon Pharmacy and One Medical • Research, design, and implement state-of-the-art machine learning models, with a focus on Large Language Models (LLMs) and Visual Language Models (VLMs) • Optimize and fine-tune models for production deployment, including model distillation for improved latency • Drive scientific innovation while maintaining a strong focus on practical business outcomes • Collaborate with cross-functional teams to translate complex technical solutions into tangible customer benefits • Contribute to the broader Amazon Health scientific community and help shape our technical roadmap
US, CA, Pasadena
The Amazon Center for Quantum Computing in Pasadena, CA, is looking to hire an Applied Scientist specializing in Mixed-Signal Design. Working alongside other scientists and engineers, you will design and validate hardware performing the control and readout functions for AWS quantum processors. Candidates must have a solid background in mixed-signal design at the printed circuit board (PCB) level. Working effectively within a cross-functional team environment is critical. The ideal candidate will have demonstrated the capability to contribute to all phases of product life cycle development, from requirements gathering to verification. Diverse Experiences Amazon values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the preferred qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn’t followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don’t let it stop you from applying. Work/Life Balance We value work-life harmony. Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why we strive for flexibility as part of our working culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve in the cloud. Inclusive Team Culture Here at Amazon, it’s in our nature to learn and be curious. Our employee-led affinity groups foster a culture of inclusion that empower us to be proud of our differences. Ongoing events and learning experiences, including our Conversations on Race and Ethnicity (CORE) and AmazeCon (gender diversity) conferences, inspire us to never stop embracing our uniqueness. Mentorship and Career Growth We’re continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth’s Best Employer. That’s why you’ll find endless knowledge-sharing, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional. Key job responsibilities Our scientists and engineers collaborate across diverse teams and projects to offer state of the art, cost effective solutions for the control of Amazon quantum processor systems. You’ll bring a passion for innovation, collaboration, and mentoring to: Solve layered technical problems, often ones not encountered before, across our hardware stack. Develop requirements with key system stakeholders, including quantum device, test and measurement, and cryogenic hardware teams. Design, implement, test, deploy, and maintain innovative solutions that meet both strict performance and cost metrics. Research enabling control system technologies necessary for Amazon to produce commercially viable quantum computers.
US, MA, Boston
The Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) team is seeking a dedicated, skilled, and innovative Applied Scientist with a robust background in machine learning, statistics, quality assurance, auditing methodologies, and automated evaluation systems to ensure the highest standards of data quality, to build industry-leading technology with Large Language Models (LLMs) and multimodal systems. Key job responsibilities As part of the AGI team, an Applied Scientist will collaborate closely with core scientist team developing Amazon Nova models. They will lead the development of comprehensive quality strategies and auditing frameworks that safeguard the integrity of data collection workflows. This includes designing auditing strategies with detailed SOPs, quality metrics, and sampling methodologies that help Nova improve performances on benchmarks. The Applied Scientist will perform expert-level manual audits, conduct meta-audits to evaluate auditor performance, and provide targeted coaching to uplift overall quality capabilities. A critical aspect of this role involves developing and maintaining LLM-as-a-Judge systems, including designing judge architectures, creating evaluation rubrics, and building machine learning models for automated quality assessment. The Applied Scientist will also set up the configuration of data collection workflows and communicate quality feedback to stakeholders. An Applied Scientist will also have a direct impact on enhancing customer experiences through high-quality training and evaluation data that powers state-of-the-art LLM products and services. A day in the life An Applied Scientist with the AGI team will support quality solution design, conduct root cause analysis on data quality issues, research new auditing methodologies, and find innovative ways of optimizing data quality while setting examples for the team on quality assurance best practices and standards. Besides theoretical analysis and quality framework development, an Applied Scientist will also work closely with talented engineers, domain experts, and vendor teams to put quality strategies and automated judging systems into practice.
US, CA, San Francisco
Amazon launched the AGI Lab to develop foundational capabilities for useful AI agents. We built Nova Act - a new AI model trained to perform actions within a web browser. The team builds AI/ML infrastructure that powers our production systems to run performantly at high scale. We’re also enabling practical AI to make our customers more productive, empowered, and fulfilled. In particular, our work combines large language models (LLMs) with reinforcement learning (RL) to solve reasoning, planning, and world modeling in both virtual and physical environments. Our lab is a small, talent-dense team with the resources and scale of Amazon. Each team in the lab has the autonomy to move fast and the long-term commitment to pursue high-risk, high-payoff research. We’re entering an exciting new era where agents can redefine what AI makes possible. We’d love for you to join our lab and build it from the ground up! Key job responsibilities This role will lead a team of SDEs building AI agents infrastructure from launch to scale. The role requires the ability to span across ML/AI system architecture and infrastructure. You will work closely with application developers and scientists to have a impact on the Agentic AI industry. We're looking for a Software Development Manager who is energized by building high performance systems, making an impact and thrives in fast-paced, collaborative environments. About the team Check out the Nova Act tools our team built on on nova.amazon.com/act
US, CA, Santa Clara
Amazon Quick Suite is an enterprise AI platform that transforms how organizations work with their data and knowledge. Combining generative AI-powered search, deep research capabilities, intelligent agents and automations, and comprehensive business intelligence, Quick Suite serves tens of thousands of users. Our platform processes thousands of queries monthly, helping teams make faster, data-driven decisions while maintaining enterprise-grade security and governance. From natural language interactions with complex datasets to automated workflows and custom AI agents, Quick Suite is redefining workplace productivity at unprecedented scale. We are seeking a Data Scientist II to join our Quick Data team, focusing on evaluation and benchmarking data development for Quick Suite features, with particular emphasis on Research and other generative AI capabilities. Our mission is to engineer high-quality datasets that are essential to the success of Amazon Quick Suite. From human evaluations and Responsible AI safeguards to Retrieval-Augmented Generation and beyond, our work ensures that Generative AI is enterprise-ready, safe, and effective for users at scale. As part of our diverse team—including data scientists, engineers, language engineers, linguists, and program managers—you will collaborate closely with science, engineering, and product teams. We are driven by customer obsession and a commitment to excellence. Key job responsibilities In this role, you will leverage data-centric AI principles to assess the impact of data on model performance and the broader machine learning pipeline. You will apply Generative AI techniques to evaluate how well our data represents human language and conduct experiments to measure downstream interactions. Specific responsibilities include: * Design and develop comprehensive evaluation and benchmarking datasets for Quick Suite AI-powered features * Leverage LLMs for synthetic data corpora generation; data evaluation and quality assessment using LLM-as-a-judge settings * Create ground truth datasets with high-quality question-answer pairs across diverse domains and use cases * Lead human annotation initiatives and model evaluation audits to ensure data quality and relevance * Develop and refine annotation guidelines and quality frameworks for evaluation tasks * Conduct statistical analysis to measure model performance, identify failure patterns, and guide improvement strategies * Collaborate with ML scientists and engineers to translate evaluation insights into actionable product improvements * Build scalable data pipelines and tools to support continuous evaluation and benchmarking efforts * Contribute to Responsible AI initiatives by developing safety and fairness evaluation datasets About the team Why AWS? Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. We pioneered cloud computing and never stopped innovating — that’s why customers from the most successful startups to Global 500 companies trust our robust suite of products and services to power their businesses. Inclusive Team Culture Here at AWS, it’s in our nature to learn and be curious. Our employee-led affinity groups foster a culture of inclusion that empower us to be proud of our differences. Ongoing events and learning experiences, including our Conversations on Race and Ethnicity (CORE) and AmazeCon conferences, inspire us to never stop embracing our uniqueness. Mentorship & Career Growth We’re continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth’s Best Employer. That’s why you’ll find endless knowledge-sharing, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional. Work/Life Balance We value work-life harmony. Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why we strive for flexibility as part of our working culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve in the cloud. Hybrid Work We value innovation and recognize this sometimes requires uninterrupted time to focus on a build. We also value in-person collaboration and time spent face-to-face. Our team affords employees options to work in the office every day or in a flexible, hybrid work model near one of our U.S. Amazon offices.
US, MA, Boston
The Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) team is seeking a dedicated, skilled, and innovative Applied Scientist with a robust background in machine learning, statistics, quality assurance, auditing methodologies, and automated evaluation systems to ensure the highest standards of data quality, to build industry-leading technology with Large Language Models (LLMs) and multimodal systems. Key job responsibilities As part of the AGI team, an Applied Scientist will collaborate closely with core scientist team developing Amazon Nova models. They will lead the development of comprehensive quality strategies and auditing frameworks that safeguard the integrity of data collection workflows. This includes designing auditing strategies with detailed SOPs, quality metrics, and sampling methodologies that help Nova improve performances on benchmarks. The Applied Scientist will perform expert-level manual audits, conduct meta-audits to evaluate auditor performance, and provide targeted coaching to uplift overall quality capabilities. A critical aspect of this role involves developing and maintaining LLM-as-a-Judge systems, including designing judge architectures, creating evaluation rubrics, and building machine learning models for automated quality assessment. The Applied Scientist will also set up the configuration of data collection workflows and communicate quality feedback to stakeholders. An Applied Scientist will also have a direct impact on enhancing customer experiences through high-quality training and evaluation data that powers state-of-the-art LLM products and services. A day in the life An Applied Scientist with the AGI team will support quality solution design, conduct root cause analysis on data quality issues, research new auditing methodologies, and find innovative ways of optimizing data quality while setting examples for the team on quality assurance best practices and standards. Besides theoretical analysis and quality framework development, an Applied Scientist will also work closely with talented engineers, domain experts, and vendor teams to put quality strategies and automated judging systems into practice.
US, MA, Boston
The Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) team is seeking a dedicated, skilled, and innovative Applied Scientist with a robust background in machine learning, statistics, quality assurance, auditing methodologies, and automated evaluation systems to ensure the highest standards of data quality, to build industry-leading technology with Large Language Models (LLMs) and multimodal systems. Key job responsibilities As part of the AGI team, an Applied Scientist will collaborate closely with core scientist team developing Amazon Nova models. They will lead the development of comprehensive quality strategies and auditing frameworks that safeguard the integrity of data collection workflows. This includes designing auditing strategies with detailed SOPs, quality metrics, and sampling methodologies that help Nova improve performances on benchmarks. The Applied Scientist will perform expert-level manual audits, conduct meta-audits to evaluate auditor performance, and provide targeted coaching to uplift overall quality capabilities. A critical aspect of this role involves developing and maintaining LLM-as-a-Judge systems, including designing judge architectures, creating evaluation rubrics, and building machine learning models for automated quality assessment. The Applied Scientist will also set up the configuration of data collection workflows and communicate quality feedback to stakeholders. An Applied Scientist will also have a direct impact on enhancing customer experiences through high-quality training and evaluation data that powers state-of-the-art LLM products and services. A day in the life An Applied Scientist with the AGI team will support quality solution design, conduct root cause analysis on data quality issues, research new auditing methodologies, and find innovative ways of optimizing data quality while setting examples for the team on quality assurance best practices and standards. Besides theoretical analysis and quality framework development, an Applied Scientist will also work closely with talented engineers, domain experts, and vendor teams to put quality strategies and automated judging systems into practice.
US, MA, Boston
The Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) team is seeking a dedicated, skilled, and innovative Applied Scientist with a robust background in machine learning, statistics, quality assurance, auditing methodologies, and automated evaluation systems to ensure the highest standards of data quality, to build industry-leading technology with Large Language Models (LLMs) and multimodal systems. Key job responsibilities As part of the AGI team, an Applied Scientist will collaborate closely with core scientist team developing Amazon Nova models. They will lead the development of comprehensive quality strategies and auditing frameworks that safeguard the integrity of data collection workflows. This includes designing auditing strategies with detailed SOPs, quality metrics, and sampling methodologies that help Nova improve performances on benchmarks. The Applied Scientist will perform expert-level manual audits, conduct meta-audits to evaluate auditor performance, and provide targeted coaching to uplift overall quality capabilities. A critical aspect of this role involves developing and maintaining LLM-as-a-Judge systems, including designing judge architectures, creating evaluation rubrics, and building machine learning models for automated quality assessment. The Applied Scientist will also set up the configuration of data collection workflows and communicate quality feedback to stakeholders. An Applied Scientist will also have a direct impact on enhancing customer experiences through high-quality training and evaluation data that powers state-of-the-art LLM products and services. A day in the life An Applied Scientist with the AGI team will support quality solution design, conduct root cause analysis on data quality issues, research new auditing methodologies, and find innovative ways of optimizing data quality while setting examples for the team on quality assurance best practices and standards. Besides theoretical analysis and quality framework development, an Applied Scientist will also work closely with talented engineers, domain experts, and vendor teams to put quality strategies and automated judging systems into practice.