Social

SimBot Challenge FAQs

Frequently asked questions about the challenge.
General
General
What is the Alexa Prize?
Alexa is Amazon’s cloud-based voice service available on over 100 million devices from Amazon and third-party device manufacturers. With Alexa, you can build natural voice experiences that offer customers a more intuitive way to interact with the technology they use every day. Our collection of tools, APIs, reference solutions, and documentation makes it easy for anyone to build with Alexa.
Why did Amazon create the Alexa Prize?
The Alexa Prize, an annual university competition dedicated to accelerating the field of conversational artificial intelligence (AI), was created to recognize students from around the globe who are changing the way we interact with technology. The goal is to advance several areas of conversational AI including natural language understanding (NLU), context modeling, dialog management, commonsense reasoning, natural language generation (NLG), and knowledge acquisition.
How does the Alexa Prize support research?
The Alexa Prize is a research testbed for university students to experiment with and advance conversational AI at scale.

Research teams own the intellectual property (IP) in their systems and are encouraged to publish scientific articles on their work. As described in the Official Rules, participating teams grant Amazon a non-exclusive license to any technology or software they develop in connection with the competition.
What new datasets will I have access to as part of the Alexa Prize?
The TEACh dataset as well as a training dataset proprietary to the live interaction portion of the SimBot Challenge will be available to competitors in each phase.
SimBot
What is the SimBot Challenge?
SimBot, a competition focused on helping advance development of next-generation virtual assistants that will assist humans in completing real-world tasks by continuously learning, and gaining the ability to perform commonsense reasoning.

The SimBot Challenge will have two phases: A public benchmark phase, and a live interactions phase. Participants in both phases will build machine-learning models for natural language understanding, human-robot interaction, and robotic task completion. Artificial intelligence challenges addressed in the competition relate to reasoning on language and scene understanding, learning from demonstration, self-learning, and task completion utilizing natural language.

Unlike previous Alexa Prize competitions, the public benchmark challenge phase will be open to university teams, as well as individuals in academia and industry interested in advancing the science of AI and engaging top researchers from around the globe. The SimBot Challenge public benchmark phase is like existing visual language navigation competitions.
What is the difference between the Public Benchmark Challenge and the Live Interaction Challenge?
The Public Benchmark Challenge is open to any individual or team, academic or industry, who wants to complete and submit a model for evaluation and rating during the evaluation period. It is based on the TEACh dataset offered to the research community in October, 2021. The Live Interaction Period’s participation is limited solely to the university-based teams selected for the SimBot Challenge in November 2021 and June, 2022. These teams will each receive Amazon sponsorship to build a SimBot that will compete in a challenge from July, 2022 to September 2022 where they will receive real time ratings and feedback from Alexa Users.
Why is the SimBot - Live Interaction Challenge only limited to university teams?
The SimBot Challenge - live interaction phase is part of the Alexa Prize which is currently limited to universities and university students in Amazon initiatives to advance AI. However, the Public Benchmarking Challenge is open to both academic and university-based teams.
What will my SimBot do?
SimBot will navigate in a virtual environment to complete challenges guided by Alexa users. SimBot will interact with objects in the environment including but not limited to those common to offices and homes. There will be obstacles and hazards introduced to make game play fun and challenging.
How will I build my SimBot?
SimBots will use images from the game and instructions from Alexa users to navigate in a virtual world. Teams will build AI models which recognize objects and scenes as well as understand natural language commands from users. We plan to provide baseline data and a baseline model as a reference but we expect teams to develop new and novel approaches as well as augment the provided data to improve performance.
Eligibility: Public Benchmark Challenge
Phase 1, SimBot challenge
Who is eligible to participate in the public benchmark challenge?
Any individual or team, academic or industry-based.
How do I sign up to participate in the public benchmark challenge?
A registration form will open on November 15, 2021 at alexaprize.com.
Is funding available to university teams competing in the public benchmark challenge?
No, funding is only available to university teams selected to participate in the SimBot Challenge. In addition to the teams selected in 2021 up to four new, high-performing teams from the public benchmark challenge will be invited to apply for the SimBot challenge, live interaction phase for which funding is available. Learn more here.
Who can apply to participate?
Any individual or team can register and participate in the public benchmark phase with exception of parties from Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, and the region of Crimea.

Registration for the public benchmark challenge will open November 15, 2021. The challenge will begin on January 10, 2022.
Do I need to be a certain age?
Participants must be at or above the age of majority in the country, state, province or jurisdiction of residence at the time of registration.
Can I enroll if a family member is an Amazon employee?
Immediate family members and household members of Amazon employees, directors and contractors are not eligible to participate.
Eligibility: SimBot Challenge
Includes sponsored teams for both Public Benchmark and Live Interaction phases
Who can apply to participate?
The Alexa Prize is open to full-time students enrolled in an accredited university, with the exception of universities in Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, and the region of Crimea (see Official Rules). Proof of enrollment will be required to participate.
Can I participate if I don’t attend a university?
No. The Alexa Prize is open only to full-time enrolled university students.
Do I need to be enrolled in a university program throughout the duration of the competition?
All participating team members must remain full-time students in good standing at their university while participating in the competition.
Do I need to be a certain age?
Participants must be at or above the age of majority in the country, state, province or jurisdiction of residence at the time of entry.
Can I enroll if a family member is an Amazon employee?
Immediate family members and household members of Amazon employees, directors and contractors are not eligible to participate. See Official Rules for additional restrictions.
If my team fails to apply for the SimBot Challenge now, will there be any future opportunities to compete in the Live Interaction challenge?
Yes, the initial application period run from October 4-31, 2021. In addition to the teams selected in 2021 up to four new, high-performing university teams from the public benchmark challenge will be invited to apply for the SimBot challenge, live interaction phase for which funding is available. Learn more here.
Will university teams selected post-Public Benchmark Challenge be eligible for funding and for what amount?
Teams selected for the SimBot Challenge in June, 2022 will be eligible for funding.
If my team was not selected during the first application period are we eligible to re-apply in may if we qualify?
Yes. University-based teams that participate in the public benchmark phase are eligible to re-apply for the SimBot challenge between May 9 - 23, 2022. Four new, high-performing university teams from the public benchmark challenge will be invited to apply for the SimBot challenge, live interaction phase for which funding is available. Learn more here.
My team is not completely comprised of university students but we perform well in the public benchmark challenge? Is there an opportunity for us to continue in the competition?
Yes, we plan to continue the public benchmark competition through the end of 2022.
My company does collaborative work with several universities, are we eligible to compete in the live interaction challenge alongside them?
No, only full-time students are eligible to participate in the SimBot challenge, which includes the live interaction period.
My university and another frequently collaborate on projects - is there any exception to the students all enrolled in one university rule?
Applications are limited to students all from the same, single, university.
Teams
How many teams will be selected to participate?
All applications will be reviewed and evaluated by a panel of Amazon experts. Up to ten teams will be selected and sponsored by Amazon. All teams selected in November, 2021 will receive a $250,000 grant while those selected in June, 2022 will receive a $200,000 grant intended to support two full-time students, a month of faculty time, free Alexa devices, and free AWS hosting including access to CPU and GPU based machines, SQL and NoSQL databases, and object storage. See the Official Rules for details.
How many team members can our team have?
There are no minimum or maximum team member requirements. All team members must be enrolled in their university throughout the duration of the competition. All teams will receive a $250,000 grant if selected in November 2021 or a $200,000 grant if selected in June, 2022 regardless of how many members are on the team. We recommend a team with 4-6 students with diverse fields of study or areas of expertise.
Can students from different universities be on the same team?
Teams must be comprised of students attending the same university.
Can one university have more than one team?
Yes, universities may have more than one team.
Can I participate on two separate teams?
You can only be a part of one team for the duration of the competition.
Can undergraduate and graduate students work together?
Yes, teams may be comprised of undergraduate and graduate students.
Do I need a faculty advisor?
All teams must nominate a faculty advisor and include the faculty advisor’s consent in the applications.
What is the role of the faculty advisor?
Faculty advisors will advise students on technical directions and be a sounding board for new ideas, similar to a graduate school advisor. They will also act as the official representative from the university for this competition.
Can we add or remove team members during the competition?
During the competition, faculty advisors may request to remove or add members to the team, subject to approval by Amazon.
Can we discuss our SimBot with faculty or students who aren’t on our team?
Only team members may work on their SimBot. However, the faculty advisor and other students and faculty members at your university may provide support and advice to your team and may co-author technical publications and research papers.
Application process
How do we apply?
Check the SimBot page for the latest update on applications.
What do we need to apply?
Once you have selected your team members, team leader, and faculty sponsor, you are ready to begin the application process.
Do all team members have to apply?
Each team must have a team lead, who should apply on behalf of the whole team. Your application must include all of your team members’ information.
Is there an application fee?
There is no application fee.
How will teams be selected to participate?
All applications will be reviewed by a panel of Amazon employees. Teams will be selected based on the following criteria: (1) the potential scientific contribution to the field; (2) the technical merit of the approach; (3) the novelty of the idea; and (4) an assessment of the team’s ability to execute against their plan. Please be sure to provide enough detail in your application to enable our experts to evaluate your proposal.
Competition details
What is the goal of the challenge?
To develop AI models which advance the state of the art and allow users to naturally interact with a robotic assistant in a virtual world to successfully complete a range of challenges.
How will winners be selected?
Winners will be determined based on the final standings at the completion of the finals period.
Can we use other funding to help us participate in this challenge?
Yes, you may use other funding to support your team, subject to the terms described in the Official Rules. External funding will need to be disclosed by January 1, 2023.
Will Alexa customers be able to engage with our SimBot?
Your team will be required to submit its SimBot for certification and publication by the Amazon Alexa team. After certification, you will enter the Internal Amazon Beta Period, where Amazon employees will test your SimBot and provide feedback. After the Internal Amazon Beta Period, we will allow Amazon Alexa customers to try your SimBot and provide feedback to you. Amazon may impose Availability Criteria, or requirements the SimBot must meet before it will be made available to Alexa users. Availability Criteria may include criteria such as a minimum average customer rating, uptime requirements, and an ability to consistently filter offensive content.
Amazon launched the Echo in the UK, Germany, India, Japan, and other countries. Will localized languages be supported?
Your team must build its SimBot using U.S. English. Your SimBot will be available to Alexa customers in the U.S. Customers in other countries may also access it by setting their Amazon PFM (Preferred Marketplace) to U.S.
Will we publish our research from the Alexa Prize?
Yes. Publishing research papers as an outcome of your work on the Alexa Prize is required for all teams participating in the competition, although teams should not publish Amazon confidential information, as described in the Official Rules. The Alexa Prize requires all teams to submit a technical paper for the Alexa Prize proceedings. Your SimBot will not be selected for the finals if your team does not submit a technical paper for Alexa Prize proceedings. Papers will be published at the end of the competition in an online Proceedings of the Alexa Prize, which will be publicly available.

Teams may also publish research papers in third-party publications and conferences, as long as all papers are provided to Amazon for review at least two weeks before the submission deadlines and no research papers are published before the Alexa Prize proceedings are published without Amazon’s prior approval.
Who will own the intellectual property rights in my submission?
You will retain ownership over your SimBot. Amazon will have a non-exclusive license to any technology or software you develop in connection with the competition. See the Official Rules for details.
Prizes
What are the prizes for winning the competition?
A prize of $500,000 will be awarded to the team that creates the best SimBot. The second-place and third-place finalist teams will receive a $100,000 and a $50,000 prize, respectively. See the contest rules for details.
Do we get a stipend and devices to participate in the Alexa Prize?
Up to ten teams will be sponsored to participate in the Alexa Prize in November, 2021. These teams’ universities will receive a $250,000 research grant to fund the team members’ work over the year. Additional teams selected to participate in the SimBot Live Interaction challenge in June, 2022 will receive a $200,000 research grant to fund the team members’ work over the year.

The sponsorship includes one Alexa-enabled device per team member for up to a total of three devices per team and one Alexa-enabled device per faculty advisor, free AWS services to support the development of their SimBot, and support from the Alexa team.
How can the grant be spent?
The grants will be awarded with the intention that they will support two full-time students for the duration of the Competition and one month of the Faculty Advisor’s salary. No more than 35% of the research grants may be allocated to administrative fees. If your team would like to use the funds in another manner, your faculty advisor must receive approval from Amazon before doing so.
What happens if we are selected and receive a stipend but can no longer participate?
Stipends will be awarded in installments payable to the university. If your team withdraws before any of the installments, remaining funds will not be transferred to the university.
How will the prizes be distributed among a team?
The first, second, and third place prizes will be distributed equally among all registered team members. The official list of registered team members must be confirmed by January 30, 2023.
Timeline
What are the key milestones of the competition?
Teams must submit their applications between October 1, 2021 and October 31, 2021. Between November 1 and November 10, 2021, we will announce teams selected to participate. In the summer of 2022 following the public benchmark phase and the second application period teams will be invited to an Alexa Prize Bootcamp at Amazon where they will receive training on the resources made available to all competing teams. The finals will be scheduled between January 30 and March 27, 2023 and will determine the winning teams in the first annual SimBot Challenge.
If selected, when will we receive the stipend, devices, access to the Alexa Prize SimBot toolkit, our AWS account, and be introduced to our point of contact?
We will reach out to all teams no later than November 10, 2021 with instructions on next steps. Up to ten teams will be selected to receive a $250,000 stipend, Alexa-enabled devices, free AWS services to support their development efforts, and support from the Alexa team.
More information
See the full competition rules or submit your questions. Need assistance? Email: alexaprizesupport@amazon.com

Latest news

The latest updates, stories, and more about Alexa Prize.
Load more

Work with us

See more jobs See more jobs
Applied Scientist II, Data Intelligence and Governance
US, CA, Sunnyvale
We are seeking an Applied Scientist II to work on development of an AI-based data intelligence and classification platform that will redefine how security and privacy assessments and enforcement are conducted at scale. This mission-critical platform will leverage AI-driven autonomous agents to conduct proactive, intelligent security operations across the company. The platform will integrate deeply with internal security, privacy, engineering, and cloud-native tools to provide self-serve, automated insights, verifications, and enforcement mechanisms. This role requires strong technical expertise in AI/ML, LLMs, and distributed cloud infrastructure, as well as thought leadership to drive alignment across multiple teams, customers, and business units. This is an opportunity to shape the future of AI-driven security and privacy assurance at an enterprise scale, defining standards, influencing company-wide security posture, and leading technical innovation at the highest level. Key job responsibilities * Architect and define the next-generation data classification and search matching platform, leading the technical strategy for AI-driven security automation across applied science and engineering teams * Build on multi-agent LLM framework, and influence your organizations in adopting the promising approaches * Develop a highly scalable, traditional ML-based as well as LLM-based intelligent security agent framework that enables internal teams to automate processing of structured and unstructured data * Combine depth and breadth of domain expertise and provide technical leadership to the entire team while also doing hands-on work by diving deep into details to diagnose complex system performance problems. About the team The Data Categorization team helps Amazonians understand their data and govern it at scale and ensures experiences delivered by Amazon to our customers uphold our high security and privacy standards. The science team harnesses AI to strengthen Amazon’s privacy and security posture more efficiently and effectively.
Applied Scientist, AWS Automated Reasoning
GB, London
Applied Scientists in AWS Automated Reasoning are dedicated to making AWS the best computing service in the world for customers who require advanced and rigorous solutions for automated reasoning, privacy, and sovereignty. Key job responsibilities The successful candidate will: - Solve large or significantly complex problems that require deep knowledge and understanding of your domain and scientific innovation. - Own strategic problem solving, and take the lead on the design, implementation, and delivery for solutions that have a long-term quantifiable impact. - Provide cross-organizational technical influence, increasing productivity and effectiveness by sharing your deep knowledge and experience. - Develop strategic plans to identify fundamentally new solutions for business problems. - Assist in the career development of others, actively mentoring individuals and the community on advanced technical issues. A day in the life This is a unique and rare opportunity to get in early on a fast-growing segment of AWS and help shape the technology, product and the business. You will have a chance to utilize your deep technical experience within a fast moving, start-up environment and make a large business and customer impact. About the team Diverse Experiences Amazon Automated Reasoning values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the 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. Why Amazon Automated Reasoning? At Amazon, automated reasoning is central to maintaining customer trust and delivering delightful customer experiences. Our organization is responsible for creating and maintaining a high bar for automated reasoning across all of Amazon's products and services. We offer talented automated reasoning professionals the chance to accelerate their careers with opportunities to build experience in a wide variety of areas including cloud, devices, retail, entertainment, healthcare, operations, and physical stores. Inclusive Team Culture In Amazon Automated Reasoning, it's in our nature to learn and be curious. Ongoing DEI events and learning experiences inspire us to continue learning and to embrace our uniqueness. Addressing the toughest automated reasoning challenges requires that we seek out and celebrate a diversity of ideas, perspectives, and voices. Training & 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, training, 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 flexible work hours and arrangements are part of our culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there's nothing we can't achieve.
Senior Applied Scientist, International Machine Learning
IN, KA, Bengaluru
Do you want to join an innovative team of scientists who use machine learning and statistical techniques to create state-of-the-art solutions for providing better value to Amazon’s customers? Do you want to build and deploy advanced algorithmic systems that help optimize millions of transactions every day? Are you excited by the prospect of analyzing and modeling terabytes of data to solve real world problems? Do you like to own end-to-end business problems/metrics and directly impact the profitability of the company? Do you like to innovate and simplify? If yes, then you may be a great fit to join the Machine Learning and Data Sciences team for India Consumer Businesses. If you have an entrepreneurial spirit, know how to deliver, love to work with data, are deeply technical, highly innovative and long for the opportunity to build solutions to challenging problems that directly impact the company's bottom-line, we want to talk to you. Major responsibilities - Use machine learning and analytical techniques to create scalable solutions for business problems - Analyze and extract relevant information from large amounts of Amazon’s historical business data to help automate and optimize key processes - Design, development, evaluate and deploy innovative and highly scalable models for predictive learning - Research and implement novel machine learning and statistical approaches - Work closely with software engineering teams to drive real-time model implementations and new feature creations - Work closely with business owners and operations staff to optimize various business operations - Establish scalable, efficient, automated processes for large scale data analyses, model development, model validation and model implementation - Mentor other scientists and engineers in the use of ML techniques Key job responsibilities Use machine learning and analytical techniques to create scalable solutions for business problems Analyze and extract relevant information from large amounts of Amazon’s historical business data to help automate and optimize key processes Design, develop, evaluate and deploy, innovative and highly scalable ML models Work closely with software engineering teams to drive real-time model implementations Work closely with business partners to identify problems and propose machine learning solutions Establish scalable, efficient, automated processes for large scale data analyses, model development, model validation and model maintenance Work proactively with engineering teams and product managers to evangelize new algorithms and drive the implementation of large-scale complex ML models in production Leading projects and mentoring other scientists, engineers in the use of ML techniques About the team International Machine Learning Team is responsible for building novel ML solutions that attack India first (and other Emerging Markets across MENA and LatAm) problems and impact the bottom-line and top-line of India business. Learn more about our team from https://www.amazon.science/working-at-amazon/how-rajeev-rastogis-machine-learning-team-in-india-develops-innovations-for-customers-worldwide
Manager, Applied Science, RBS Tech
IN, KA, Bengaluru
RBS (Retail Business Services) Tech team works towards enhancing the customer experience (CX) and their trust in product data by providing technologies to find and fix Amazon CX defects at scale. Our platforms help in improving the CX in all phases of customer journey, including selection, discoverability & fulfilment, buying experience and post-buying experience (product quality and customer returns). As a Sciences team in RBS Tech, we focus on foundational ML research and develop scalable state-of-the-art ML solutions to solve the problems covering customer experience (CX) and Selling partner experience (SPX). We work to solve problems related to multi-modal understanding (text and visual), supervised and unsupervised techniques, multi-task learning, multi-label classification, aspect and topic extraction for Customer Anecdote Mining, product similarity, using GenAI, LLMs, NLP and Computer Vision. Key job responsibilities As an Applied Science Manager, you will be responsible to design and deploy scalable GenAI, NLP and Computer Vision solutions that will impact the content visible to millions of customer and solve key customer experience issues. You will Lead scientists on the team and oversee research and development projects at various stages ranging from initial exploration to deployment into production systems. You will partner with business and engineering teams to identify and solve large and significantly complex problems that require scientific innovation. You will help the team leverage your expertise, by coaching and mentoring. You will contribute to the professional development of colleagues, improving their technical knowledge and the engineering practices. You will create the environment in the team to file for patents and/or publish research work where opportunities arise. You will impact the large product strategy, identifies new business opportunities and provides strategic direction to the team.
Applied Science II, Edge Technology
US, CA, Sunnyvale
Are you excited about developing state-of-the-art Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Deep Learning and Computer Vision algorithms and designs using large data sets to solve real world problems? Do you have proven analytical capabilities and can multi-task and thrive in a fast-paced environment? Do you want to build a foundation for your career after your Master's or Ph.D program at an industry-leading company? You enjoy the prospect of solving real-world problems that, quite frankly, have not been solved at scale anywhere before. Along the way, you’ll get opportunities to be a disruptor, prolific innovator, and a reputed problem solver—someone who truly enables machine learning to create significant impacts. As an Applied Scientist, you will bring statistical modeling and machine learning advancements to data analytics for customer-facing solutions in complex industrial settings. You will be working in a fast-paced, cross-disciplinary team of researchers who are leaders in the field. You will take on challenging problems, distill real requirements, and then deliver solutions that either leverage existing academic and industrial research, or utilize your own out-of-the-box pragmatic thinking. In addition to coming up with novel solutions and prototypes, you may even need to deliver these to production in customer facing products
Sr. Applied Scientist, Amazon Customer Service
US, WA, Seattle
We are seeking a senior Applied Scientist to join a science team within Amazon Customer Service that is reimagining how customers are connected with the right support experience. This is a senior technical leadership role where you will drive scientific strategy, mentor junior scientists, and deliver foundational models that power real-time personalization at scale. Key job responsibilities - Lead the science for understanding the demand side of customer service interactions - Characterize who is contacting us, what they need, and how complex their situation is - Invent novel representation learning approaches that encode customer interactions - Directly inform intelligent routing decisions across hundreds of millions of annual contacts
Applied Scientist , Amazon Customer Service
US, WA, Seattle
We are seeking an Applied Scientist to join a science team within Amazon Customer Service that is reimagining how customers are connected with the right support experience. This is a role at the intersection of representation learning, behavioral modeling, and large-scale experimentation where you will see your science deployed in production systems serving real-time decisions. Key job responsibilities - Develop machine learning models that capture how service associates perform across different problem types and how their capabilities evolve over time - Power intelligent routing decisions across hundreds of millions of annual customer contacts - Directly improve both customer experience and associate satisfaction through model-driven decisions - Work at the intersection of representation learning, behavioral modeling, and large-scale experimentation - Deploy science into production systems serving real-time decisions
Applied Scientist, GenAI Catalog Intelligence, PRISM
US, CA, Sunnyvale
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.
Member of Technical Staff - Robotics Mechanical Engineer, Frontier AI & Robotics
US, CA, San Francisco
We are seeking a Member of Technical Staff — Mechanical Engineer to lead the structural and electromechanical design of advanced high degree-of-freedom robotic systems within a frontier AI and robotics research lab. You will own the mechanical architecture of our robotics platform end-to-end: actuator selection, joint design, thermal management, cable routing, sensing integration, and structural optimization — all under the demanding constraints of a high-DoF system that must be lightweight, robust, and production-viable. This is a unique opportunity to define the physical design direction of a next-generation robotics platform from first principles. The ideal candidate has deep experience designing complex robotic systems and scaling hardware from concept through prototyping to production. You thrive on analytical problem solving, possess strong intuition for structural and electromechanical tradeoffs, and are equally comfortable in CAD and on the shop floor. You will be the technical lead of a small team of talented mechanical engineers while collaborating closely with electrical, firmware, controls, and AI research teams to set the mechanical and structural direction of the platform. Beyond core platform development, this role offers real latitude to push into novel territory — novel actuation methods, advanced sensor integration, or new approaches to mechatronic packaging. If you have research instincts alongside shipping discipline, you'll find an environment that rewards both. We're looking for someone who wants to be the technical authority on how a high-performance robot is physically built, not just a contributor to the effort. What You Bring: - A systems-thinking mindset with a strong grasp of cross-domain engineering tradeoffs. - A bias toward action: comfortable building, testing, and iterating rapidly. - A collaborative and communicative working style — especially in multi-disciplinary research environments. - A passion for robotics and advancing the state of the art in intelligent, capable machines. Key job responsibilities - Lead mechanical design of robotic subsystems and full platforms, including structures, joints, enclosures, and mechanisms for a research environment. - Own kinematic, dynamic, and structural analyses to guide the design and optimization of full systems and subsystems of high-DoF robots - Specify and integrate actuators and motors for high-torque density applications in high-degree-of-freedom systems. - Drive rapid iteration and prototyping cycles — from concept sketches through functional hardware — to accelerate learning and compress development timelines in a fast-paced R&D environment. - Partner with the AI research team to establish simulation pipelines that enable rapid exploration of mechanical design space, informing actuator choices, structural topology, and system-level tradeoffs before committing to physical builds. - Contribute to thermal management strategies for motors, sensors, and embedded compute hardware. - Integrate sensors such as lidar, stereo cameras, IMUs, tactile sensors, and compute modules into compact, functional assemblies. - Design and route cabling and wire harnesses, ensuring reliability, serviceability, and thermal/electrical integrity. - Prototype and test mechanical systems; support hands-on builds, debug sessions, and field testing. - Conduct root cause analysis on system-level failures or performance issues and implement design improvements. - Apply Design for Manufacturing (DFM) and Design for Assembly (DFA) principles to transition prototypes into scalable builds (10s–100s of units). - Collaborate with cross-functional teams in electrical engineering, controls, perception, and research to meet research and product goals. About the team Frontier AI & Robotics (FAR) is the team at Amazon building the next generation of embodied intelligence. FAR drives the development and implementation of advanced AI models within Amazon’s operations that enable robots to see, reason, and act on the world around them, supporting a number of different warehouse automation tasks.
Data Scientist, Security Issue Management
US, WA, Seattle
Are you interested in building Agentic AI solutions that solve complex builder experience challenges with significant global impact? The Security Tooling team designs and builds high-performance AI systems using LLMs and machine learning that identify builder bottlenecks, automate security workflows, and optimize the software development lifecycle—empowering engineering teams worldwide to ship secure code faster while maintaining the highest security standards. As a Data Scientist on our Security Tool team, you will focus on building state-of-the-art ML models to enhance builder experience and productivity. You will identify builder bottlenecks and pain points across the software development lifecycle, design and apply experiments to study developer behavior, and measure the downstream impacts of security tooling on engineering velocity and code quality. Our team rewards curiosity while maintaining a laser-focus on bringing products to market that empower builders while maintaining security excellence. Competitive candidates are responsive, flexible, and able to succeed within an open, collaborative, entrepreneurial, startup-like environment. At the forefront of both academic and applied research in builder experience and security automation, you have the opportunity to work together with a diverse and talented team of scientists, engineers, and product managers and collaborate with other teams. This role offers a unique opportunity to work on projects that could fundamentally transform how builders interact with security tools and how organizations balance security requirements with developer productivity. Key job responsibilities Design and run rigorous experiments to evaluate and improve security tooling performance, builder experience, and adoption across hundreds of thousands of builders, multiple security tools, and diverse business verticals. Lead the end-to-end lifecycle of data science and ML models — from research and experimentation through production launch — including defining success metrics, obtaining stakeholder sign-off, and managing rollout. Conduct online and offline analyses to measure the real-world impact of security tooling improvements beyond adoption metrics, including downstream effects on vulnerability resolution, builder productivity, and organizational security posture. Develop and deploy production-grade machine learning and statistical models using Python, SQL, and related tools to automate insights, detect patterns, and drive decision-making across STF's security tool ecosystem. Perform large-scale exploratory data analysis on builder feedback, ticket resolution, tool usage, and customer satisfaction data to uncover patterns, identify opportunities, and inform product and tooling decisions. Translate complex research findings into clear insights and recommendations for technical and non-technical stakeholders at all levels, including STF leadership metric reporting and customer satisfaction publications. Contribute to Amazon's scientific community and the broader research field through collaboration and publication in top-tier venues. A day in the life Morning - Review overnight pipeline health — nudge systems, ticket classification models, and adoption dashboards running as expected - Join daily standup with the SDI team to align on priorities and flag blockers - Dive into exploratory analysis — investigating a spike in unresolved tickets or segmenting builder feedback to understand adoption gaps Midday - Partner with security tool owners (e.g., Shepherd, Talos, Scorecard) to review experiment results — did the latest nudge improve resolution rates? - Translate findings into actionable recommendations for leadership reviews or WBR updates - Analyze CSAT survey data to surface emerging dissatisfaction themes Afternoon - Write production code — building features for the classification pipeline, optimizing SQL for the metrics scorecard, or iterating on a model for predicting resolution timelines - Collaborate with STF stakeholders to define success metrics for an upcoming model launch - Document findings, update trackers, and queue next steps About the team Diverse Experiences Amazon Security values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the 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. Why Amazon Security? At Amazon, security is central to maintaining customer trust and delivering delightful customer experiences. Our organization is responsible for creating and maintaining a high bar for security across all of Amazon’s products and services. We offer talented security professionals the chance to accelerate their careers with opportunities to build experience in a wide variety of areas including cloud, devices, retail, entertainment, healthcare, operations, and physical stores. Inclusive Team Culture In Amazon Security, it’s in our nature to learn and be curious. Ongoing DEI events and learning experiences inspire us to continue learning and to embrace our uniqueness. Addressing the toughest security challenges requires that we seek out and celebrate a diversity of ideas, perspectives, and voices. Training & 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, training, 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 flexible work hours and arrangements are part of our culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve.
See more jobs
View from space of a connected network around planet Earth representing the Internet of Things.
Get more from Amazon Science
Subscribe to our newsletter

Amazon.com | Conditions of Use | Privacy | © 1996-2026 Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates

Social