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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

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Robotics Applied Scientist
US, CA, Sunnyvale
Amazon is seeking exceptional talent to help develop the next generation of advanced robotics systems that will transform automation at Amazon's scale. We're building robotic systems that combine frontier AI, sophisticated control, and advanced mechanical design to create adaptable automation capable of working safely alongside humans in dynamic environments. This is an opportunity to shape the future of robotics and automation at an unprecedented scale, working with world-class teams pushing the boundaries of what's possible in robotic manipulation, locomotion, and human-robot interaction. We are seeking an Applied Scientist to develop tactile- and force-driven manipulation policies for highly dexterous, multi-fingered robotic hands and grippers. In this role you will research and build policy learning algorithms that enable robotic hands to perform grasping and in-hand manipulation in unstructured, real-world environments, using touch and force feedback as first-class signals rather than afterthoughts. Much of this work is grounded in reinforcement learning. To be successful you need to be highly motivated, dive deep, and deliver to the highest standards. You will demonstrate strong working knowledge of modern policy learning methods, with expertise in taking algorithms from simulation onto real hardware. That means being comfortable working against real physical constraints and treating sim-to-real as a core research problem rather than optimizing for benchmark numbers alone. You will work across tactile signal processing, contact-rich manipulation, sim-to-real transfer, and multi-modal sensor fusion to build robust solutions for autonomous grasping, dexterous re-orientation, and fine motor control. You will bring the desire to learn from new challenges, and the problem-solving and communication skills to work within a highly interactive and experienced team. Key job responsibilities - Design and train manipulation policies that leverage tactile and force feedback for dexterous grasping, in-hand manipulation, and contact-rich tasks, using reinforcement learning, imitation learning, or hybrid approaches. - Drive sim-to-real transfer, closing the gap between simulated and physical performance on real robotic hands. - Shape objectives and control strategies with the hardware in mind, accounting for how motors and actuators actually behave: transmission ratios, torque versus power, backdrivability, and thermal limits. - Build simulation-based and on-robot evaluation frameworks, with benchmarks and metrics that make tactile perception and policy performance systematically comparable across iterations. - Own scientific and technical projects within the tactile sensing and manipulation workstreams, driving from research concept through deployment on physical robotic systems — and, at the senior level, set direction across a workstream. - Collaborate with hardware, mechanical design, firmware, and controls teams — and with partner applied science organizations — to translate research advances into deployable robotic capabilities, and to inform sensor and actuator design decisions with policy-level requirements. - Publish at top-tier venues and build collaborations with the external research community. - Contribute to a strong scientific bar on the team through code and design review, and mentor engineers and interns working on real-world manipulation and sensing problems. A day in the life Your morning might start with a standup alongside hardware and controls engineers reviewing overnight sim-to-real training runs on a multi-finger gripper, debugging why a grasp policy that worked in simulation is slipping on a real sensor array. Mid-morning you join the weekly tactile sensing workstream to align on sensor integration milestones and share early results from a contact-state estimator you have been prototyping. After lunch you spend a focused block iterating on a reinforcement learning reward formulation, testing variations in simulation before queuing runs on the cluster. Later you pair with a mechanical engineer to review sensor placement trade-offs on an upcoming gripper revision, then wrap the day by drafting a short experiment write-up and sketching next steps for a conference submission. No two days look exactly the same: one week you may be collecting teleoperated demonstrations on the physical robot to seed an imitation learning pipeline; the next you could be deep in a codebase refactor to support a new tactile modality. Throughout, you balance hands-on research — writing algorithms, running experiments, analyzing data — with cross-team collaboration and mentoring. The common thread is moving from research insight to working capability on real hardware, with a tight feedback loop between simulation and the physical world. About the team Our is developing next-generation manipulation capabilities for highly dexterous multi-fingered grippers and hands. Our work spans tactile sensor development, manipulation policy learning, and the tight integration of sensing hardware with intelligent control software. We are building systems that can feel, adapt, and manipulate with human-level dexterity. You will join a team working at the frontier of tactile sensing and contact-rich manipulation, helping define how robots perceive and interact with objects through touch. Because we build the hands as well as the policies that drive them, you will have a direct line to the sensor, actuator, and mechanism designs your algorithms depend on — and real influence over how they evolve. This is an opportunity to solve hard problems across perception, learning, and physical interaction alongside a team of scientists and engineers building toward real-world deployment.
Data Scientist, OTS - Data ANCHOR Team
US, TX, Austin
The OTS ANCHOR (Analytics, Insights, and Centralized Hub for OTS Reporting) team is part of the WW IT Operations & RME organization, responsible for delivering data solutions that drive operational excellence across Amazon's global IT infrastructure. We build data pipelines, predictive models, develop analytical intelligence frameworks, and create AI-powered solutions that transform how Amazon manages, triages, and resolves IT operational incidents at scale pointing towards the Letting Data Tell the Story north start vision. We are seeking a Data Scientist to help own the end-to-end data science charter for critical operational workstreams — from forecasting IT service demand and capacity planning to designing intelligent severity triaging models and building the analytical backbone for agentic AI solutions. You will work backwards from complex operational problems to create models and solutions that directly impact the efficiency and reliability of Amazon's IT operations worldwide. Key job responsibilities - Design, develop, and deploy machine learning models for IT operations forecasting, including incident volume prediction, capacity planning, and workforce demand modeling - Build and maintain severity classification and intelligent triaging models that process thousands of daily IT service tickets across global regions - Develop anomaly detection systems to identify emerging patterns in operational data, supporting proactive incident prevention - Apply econometric and statistical methods to measure the impact of operational interventions and inform resource allocation decisions - Partner with engineering teams to productionize ML models via automated pipelines using AWS services (SageMaker, Step Functions, Lambda, Redshift) - Design and conduct experiments to empirically validate model performance and operational impact - Contribute to data quality monitoring frameworks and help maintain standards for operational data integrity - Collaborate with cross-functional teams (ServiceNow platform, Decision Intelligence, Field Operations) to translate analytical insights into actionable recommendations - Communicate findings, model performance, and recommendations to stakeholders and senior leaders through written documents and presentations - Contribute to the team's science roadmap, identifying opportunities to apply ML/AI (including Generative AI) to operational challenges A day in the life Amazon Benefits: Amazon offers a full range of benefits that support you and eligible family members, including domestic partners and their children. Benefits can vary by location, the number of regularly scheduled hours you work, length of employment, and job status such as seasonal or temporary employment. The benefits that generally apply to regular, full-time employees include: 1. Medical, Dental, and Vision Coverage 2. Maternity and Parental Leave Options 3. Paid Time Off (PTO) 4. 401(k) Plan
Senior Applied Scientist, Amazon Leo, Amazon Leo Networking Software
US, WA, Redmond
Amazon Leo is building a low Earth orbit satellite broadband network to deliver fast, affordable connectivity to customers around the world, including those underserved by traditional infrastructure. Operating a live constellation and its ground network at scale means service disruptions are an inevitable reality, and how quickly we detect them, understand them, and prevent them from recurring defines the trust we earn as a connectivity provider. We are seeking a talented Senior Applied Scientist to build the next generation of observability and availability science for the Leo network. Leo already detects outages, notifies affected customers, and restores service. The frontier is prediction and prevention: reasoning over complex network and ground-segment telemetry to autonomously detect anomalies before they reach customers, attribute root cause automatically across a sprawling event surface, and rationalize a large, still-maturing metric set so responders trust what the system tells them. In this role you will work backwards from the needs of customers and operations teams. You will own the scientific direction end to end, partnering closely with network engineers, the Network Operations Center, and the Incident Management team, and the Software and Networking orginization to translate a long-term science vision into concrete research and delivery roadmaps. Export Control Requirement: Due to applicable export control laws and regulations, candidates must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (i.e., current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum. Key job responsibilities * Own the observability and availability science end to end, from long-term vision to research roadmap to production delivery, working backwards from the needs of customers, the NOC, and network engineering. * Develop time-series and graph-based models with dynamic baselining that detect network and ground-segment anomalies before they cross the High Severity threshold, enabling proactive investigation rather than reactive response. * Reason over complex, multi-system telemetry to attribute cause automatically during live HSEs and LSEs, so Call Leaders and engineers spend time mitigating, not hunting. * Provide the science behind the network's bucketed availability decomposition (geometric and satellite coverage, ground and network segments, customer terminals, payload, and planning), attributing every movement to a true cause rather than noise, so leadership steers on signal and engineering effort lands where it actually moves availability and throughput. * Deliver the models, analyses, and metrics that feed the daily system readiness and validation review consumed by senior leadership and product and engineering, turning availability and throughput data into a defensible, evidence-based read on progress against GA entry criteria. * Own the recurring, fleet-wide "hot topic" investigations that span ASIC, firmware, payload, network, and planning, separating correlated symptoms from true root cause across thousands of nodes, quantifying how much availability or throughput each is costing, and answering whether it is a launch-blocking risk and whether it is improving. * Deliver alert correlation and deduplication, false-positive reduction, and metric-quality scoring so responders trust what the system tells them, directly supporting a large, still-maturing KPI set. * Tie your science to the unit the org actually measures: reduce detection and attribution time, raise availability against the network's bar, and increase the share of events prevented before customer impact. * Partner day to day with the Network Operations Center, Network Engineering, and the Incident Management (Call Leader) program; sit on live HSE/LSE bridges as the science partner and turn event learnings into model improvements. * Feed COEs and RCAs back into detection and attribution so recurring signatures are caught earlier, and help design and score gamedays that stress-test both the network and your models against real, closed events. * Build and deploy production pipelines on AWS (e.g., SageMaker, Bedrock, Glue) with model validation, monitoring, drift detection, and explainability, because operations teams must be able to trust and act on model output under pressure. * Set data-science standards, mentor scientists, and drive best practices across the Leo networking organization as the science function scales. * Produce explainable output and written narratives that let responders and leaders three or more levels up act on your models during and between events.
Data Scientist, WWGS SSG Strategic Initiative Development
CN, 31, Shanghai
As WWGS is committed to building an AI-native, agentic organization, the heart of SSG's evolution is to reinvent how we engage sellers with an AI-first mindset. Delivering that ambition at scale demands breakthrough innovation in our foundational capabilities, at ever-faster speed. To meet these priorities with the pace and focus they require, we are standing up a dedicated team, organized as a POD model - a lean, cross-functional team led by a single owner who holds end-to-end decisions and the business outcome, so we can move at the speed the business demands. Our priority is to build the capability to reach the right sellers at scale, anchored on two pillars: Seller Tagging and Good Contact. Through Seller Tagging, we will turn today's fragmented, siloed seller signals into a unified seller intelligence capability that deepens and broadens how well we truly understand every seller. Through Good Contact, we will resolve the seller identity gaps across our channels and systems, so that every engagement and every system that depends on it, can consistently reach the right seller contact. The Data Scientist will be part of the POD team and support the team to establish structured data governance and model training framework, and trail predict models with real business use cases. Key job responsibilities Design and deliver seller segmentation and propensity models at scale — incorporating GMS, category, growth trajectory, engagement signals, and lifecycle stage. Build contact quality scoring and lifecycle management systems (coverage optimization, dormancy detection, reactivation modeling). Define success metrics, experimentation frameworks (A/B, causal inference), and measurement methodology for seller engagement interventions. Productionize ML models and data products — partner with engineering to deploy seller scores, contact quality indices, and recommendation signals. Explore LLM/GenAI applications: automated insight generation from seller data, contact intent classification, and intelligent report synthesis. Serve as the science representative in bi-weekly NBS theme reviews; present findings and proposals to theme Bar Raisers and leadership. Collaborate with BIE team members to democratize analytical outputs via dashboards and self-serve tools. Contribute to cross-marketplace seller behavior analysis supporting Global Expansion strategy (IN, KR, VN, LATAM). Evaluate, integrate, and iterate on AI systems — assess new AI/ML tools, frameworks, and third-party models for applicability to seller intelligence use cases.
Sr. Applied Scientist - CV, Vulcan Stow
US, WA, Seattle
Do you want to create the greatest-possible worldwide impact in Robotics? Amazon has the world's most exciting treasure trove of robotics challenges. At Amazon Robotics we build high-performance, real-time robotic systems that can perceive, learn, and act intelligently alongside humans—at Amazon scale. Amazon Robotics invents and scales AI systems for robotics in fulfillment. Our mission is to enable robots to interact safely, efficiently, and fluently high density real-world fulfillment centers. Our AI solutions enable robots to learn from their own experiences, from each other, and from humans to build intelligence that feeds itself. We hire and develop subject matter experts in AI with a focus on 3D perception, computer vision, deep learning, and generative modeling. We target high-impact algorithmic unlocks in areas such as 3D scene understanding and completion, semantic occupancy prediction, multi-view 3D reconstruction, depth estimation, shape completion, and real-time inference - all of which have high-value impact for our current and future fulfillment networks. We are seeking an passionate, hands-on, seasoned Senior Applied Scientist who will be deep in code and algorithms; who is technically strong in building scalable 3D perception systems across semantic scene completion, encoder-decoder and transformer architectures (e.g., VoxFormer, MonoScene), voxelized occupancy prediction, panoptic and instance segmentation, depth estimation, point cloud processing, and multi-view fusion. As a Senior Applied Scientist, you will contribute to the research and development of advanced 3D perception pipelines that enable robots to reason about occluded and partially observed environments; your work along with other top-notch scientists and engineers will deliver the world's most scalable and robust robotic perception systems. You will drive ideas to products using paradigms such as 3D generative models, query-based transformers, masked autoencoder-style completion, and scalable pseudo-ground-truth data generation. As a Senior Applied Scientist, you will also help lead and mentor our team of applied scientists and engineers. You will take on challenging perception problems - such as completing 3D bin scenes from partial observations, integrating multi-camera inputs, and optimizing inference latency for edge deployment - distill requirements, and then deliver solutions that either leverage existing academic and industrial research or utilize your own out-of-the-box but pragmatic thinking. In addition to coming up with novel solutions and prototypes, you will directly contribute to implementation while you lead. A successful candidate has excellent technical depth in 3D computer vision, scientific vision, project management skills, great communication skills, and a drive to achieve results in a collaborative team environment. You should enjoy the process of solving real-world problems that, quite frankly, haven't been solved at scale anywhere before. Along the way, we guarantee you'll get opportunities to be a disruptor, prolific innovator, and a reputed problem solver—someone who truly enables AI and robotics to significantly impact the lives of millions of consumers. Key job responsibilities Architect, design, and implement 3D perception models - including encoder-decoder networks, query-based transformers, and generative architectures- for semantic occupancy prediction and scene completion on robotic platforms. Own the end-to-end model lifecycle: develop scalable training pipelines, optimize inference latency for ARM-based edge processors, and deploy production models that meet real-time performance targets. Design and scale pseudo-ground-truth data generation pipelines - both heuristic-based and learning-based (e.g., SAM3D, shape completion) to produce curated training samples using SageMaker infrastructure. Drive multi-view perception integration by fusing multiple view camera inputs for robust 3D reconstruction in partially observed and occluded bin environments. Influence the team's technical strategy and contribute to the long-term vision and roadmap for 3D perception in fulfillment robotics. Partner with cross-functional stakeholders across engineering, science, and operations teams to define requirements, iterate on system design, and deliver end-to-end solutions from research prototype to production deployment. Maintain high standards by participating in design and code reviews, designing for fault tolerance and operational excellence, and creating mechanisms for continuous improvement. Prototype and validate concepts through simulation, synthetic data evaluation, and live robotic workcell testing using 3D metrics (mIoU, IoU) and affordance-based evaluation frameworks. Mentor applied scientists and engineers, raise the technical bar, and foster a culture of scientific rigor and rapid experimentation. A day in the life Amazon offers a full range of benefits that support you and eligible family members, including domestic partners. Benefits can vary by location, the number of regularly scheduled hours you work, length of employment, and job status such as seasonal or temporary employment. The benefits that generally apply to regular, full-time employees include: 1. Medical, Dental, and Vision Coverage 2. Maternity and Parental Leave Options 3. Paid Time Off (PTO) 4. 401(k) Plan If you are not sure that every qualification on the list above describes you exactly, we'd still love to hear from you! At Amazon, we value people with unique backgrounds, experiences, and skillsets. If you’re passionate about this role and want to make an impact on a global scale, please apply!
Sr. Manager, Applied Science, Sponsored Products and Brands
US, CA, Palo Alto
Are you passionate about using AI to protect and elevate the shopping experience for hundreds of millions of customers? We're looking for a Sr. Applied Science Manager to lead the Sponsored Products and Brands, Search Relevance team, ensuring that every product recommendation shoppers see on our search results page is relevant, trustworthy, and genuinely useful. In this role, you'll be at the forefront of defining what a great search experience looks like by inventing entirely new ways to help customers understand why a product matches their needs. Safeguard the Customer Experience - Lead the development of predictive models that identify and mitigate irrelevant, misleading, or low-quality product recommendations across search placements - Design and scale AI-powered systems whose outputs are used to continually improve the search results - Expand the definition of search quality beyond query-ASIN relevance to encompass shopper preferences, page-level context, and overall experience coherence Define and Measure Search Quality at Scale - Own the development and ongoing measurement of customer experience metrics as reported to senior leadership - Partner with leaders across Search, Retail, and Advertising organizations to align on metric definitions and establish independent measurement standards where needed - Build scalable measurement frameworks that anticipate evolving search presentation formats and proactively adapt to them Invest in State-of-the-Art AI Infrastructure - Drive investment in AI infrastructure and systems that reduce the cost of measuring and monitoring CX metrics across all placements and marketplaces - Build increasingly precise AI models that minimize human effort for auditing, training data generation, and placement-specific customization - Make strategic build-vs-reuse decisions by staying closely connected to peer teams across the organization Invent New Product Experiences - Create novel product presentation experiences that help shoppers understand the differential value of each result — through intelligent selection of images and titles, contextual explanations, and visual indicators such as badges and tags - Partner with peer teams to share learnings and advocate for the adoption of successful innovations beyond your immediate scope Lead and Influence Across the Organization - Manage and grow a team of applied scientists, engineers, and product managers - Partner with senior leaders (Director-level and above) across multiple organizations to drive alignment on shared goals and cross-functional initiatives - Represent search quality and customer experience in executive-level reviews and reporting cadences
Senior Applied Scientist
DE, BE, Berlin
At Audible, we believe stories have the power to transform lives. It’s why we work with some of the world’s leading creators to produce and share audio storytelling with our millions of global listeners. We are dreamers and inventors who come from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences to empower and inspire each other. Imagine your future with us. ABOUT THIS ROLE As a Senior Applied Scientist, you will solve large complex real-world problems at scale, draw inspiration from the latest science and technology to empower undefined/untapped business use cases, delve into customer requirements, collaborate with tech and product teams on design, and create production-ready models that span various domains, including Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Generative AI, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Reinforcement Learning (RL), real-time and distributed systems. ABOUT YOU Your work will focus on inventing and extending scientific approaches, models, and algorithms driven by customer needs at the product level, framing new research problems even when the problem is ill-defined and no textbook solution exists. You will lead the design, implementation, and delivery of scientifically complex, end-to-end solutions that are deployed into production, defining system-level requirements and writing a significant portion of the critical-path code. You will develop reusable science components and services that resolve architecture deficiencies and customers’ pain points, while making technical trade-offs for long-term/short-term. You will work independently with limited guidance, and your decision-making will consistently incorporate robust, data-driven business and technical judgment. You will drive your team’s scientific agenda, author internal or external peer-reviewed publications that validate the novelty of your work, mentor and develop other scientists, and build consensus across multiple teams. You will have the opportunity to innovate, invent, and think big, and influence the experiences of millions of customers. We are looking for a results-oriented Senior Applied Scientist with deep expertise in ML, NLP, Deep Learning, GenAI, and/or large-scale distributed computation. As an Applied Scientist, you will... - Understand complex, ambiguous use cases across the business and adopt/extend/design/invent solutions/models that are scalable, efficient, and automated, where neither the problem nor the solution is well defined - Work closely with fellow scientists and software engineers (at Audible and Amazon) to build and productionize models, and deliver novel and highly impactful features - Review models of peers for the purpose of reducing and managing risk to the business, while improving customer experience - Lead the design, development, and production deployment of scientifically complex, end-to-end solutions for Content Understanding, Recommendations, and GenAI-based product features, defining system-level requirements - Drive and lead initiatives that employ the most recent advances in ML/AI/GenAI, drive your team’s scientific agenda, and author peer-reviewed publications - Mentor and grow scientists on the team and across Amazon, and push the boundary of innovation ABOUT AUDIBLE Audible is the leading producer and provider of audio storytelling. We spark listeners’ imaginations, offering immersive, cinematic experiences full of inspiration and insight to enrich our customers daily lives. We are a global company with an entrepreneurial spirit. We are dreamers and inventors who are passionate about the positive impact Audible can make for our customers and our neighbors. This spirit courses throughout Audible, supporting a culture of creativity and inclusion built on our People Principles and our mission to build more equitable communities in the cities we call home.
2027 Applied Scientist Internship – PhD, Amazon University Talent Acquisition
IT, Turin
We're building systems that turn research into real world impact. We're advancing the intelligence behind how customers converse, connect and interact with Alexa across the globe and we're tackling complex conversational AI challenges with state of the art GenAI systems. We're looking for PhD students across multiple research domains to invent, design, and implement state of the art solutions for never before solved problems. Your work here won't just stay in a notebook, it ships to production and reaches customers worldwide. Check out the details below including the job responsibilities, team details, and basic qualifications before submitting your application. You can find more information about the Amazon Science community as well as interview preparation tips via the links below; - https://www.amazon.science/ - https://amazon.jobs/content/en/career-programs/university/science - https://amazon.jobs/content/en/how-we-hire/university-roles/applied-science Key job responsibilities As an Applied Science Intern, you will own the design and development of end-to-end systems. You'll have the opportunity to write technical white papers, create roadmaps and drive production level projects that will support Amazon Science. You will work closely with Amazon scientists and other science interns to develop solutions and deploy them into production. You will have the opportunity to design new algorithms, models, or other technical solutions whilst experiencing Amazon's customer focused culture. The ideal intern should have the ability to work with diverse groups of people and cross-functional teams to solve complex business problems. A day in the life You'll spend your first weeks scoping your project with your mentor, then own the research and implementation end-to-end. Projects may include developing and implementing real-time AI services, conducting comprehensive analysis of GenAI algorithms and methodologies or contributing to the creation of reliable, efficient code for production systems that serve millions of users — depending on the team you're matched with. Many interns publish at top-tier conferences or see their work deployed to production before the internship ends. Interns may also be considered for a return offer at the end of their internship, subject to performance evaluation and headcount availability. Further benefits of an Amazon Science internship include; - All of our internships offer a competitive salary - Interns are paired with an experienced manager and mentor(s) - Interns get invited to different intern program or office events - Interns can build their professional and personal network with other Amazon Scientists - Interns can potentially publish work at top tier conferences About the team You'll submit a single application and we'll match you with science teams best aligned with your research interests. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, and your application stays active until we find a team match or confirm there are no matches available. Start dates are available throughout the year for durations of between 3–6 months. Please note, each team has different start date and duration preferences — your recruiter will confirm the preferences of the team you're matched with prior to interviewing. We offer science internships in multiple locations across the EMEA region and you can indicate your interest in all these locations by applying here (Austria, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, UAE, and UK). Please note we do not offer remote internships.
Quality Assurance Manager, Special Projects
US, WA, Seattle
Innovators wanted! Are you an entrepreneur? A builder? A dreamer? This role is part of an Amazon Special Projects team that takes the company’s Think Big leadership principle to the extreme. We focus on creating entirely new products and services with a goal of positively impacting the lives of our customers. No industries or subject areas are out of bounds. If you’re interested in innovating at scale to address big challenges in the world, this is the team for you. Here at Amazon, we embrace our differences. We are committed to furthering our culture of inclusion. We have thirteen employee-led affinity groups, reaching 40,000 employees in over 190 chapters globally. We are constantly learning through programs that are local, regional, and global. Amazon’s culture of inclusion is reinforced within our 16 Leadership Principles, which remind team members to seek diverse perspectives, learn and be curious, and earn trust. Our team highly values work-life balance, mentorship and career growth. We believe striking the right balance between your personal and professional life is critical to life-long happiness and fulfillment. We care about your career growth and strive to assign projects and offer training that will challenge you to become your best.
Senior Applied Scientist, PV Ads Science
US, WA, Seattle
Prime Video is a first-stop entertainment destination offering customers a vast collection of premium programming in one app available across thousands of devices. Prime members can customize their viewing experience and find their favorite movies, series, documentaries, and live sports – including Amazon MGM Studios-produced series and movies; licensed fan favorites; and programming from Prime Video subscriptions such as Apple TV+, HBO Max, Peacock, Crunchyroll and MGM+. All customers, regardless of whether they have a Prime membership or not, can rent or buy titles via the Prime Video Store, and can enjoy even more content for free with ads. Are you interested in shaping the future of entertainment? Prime Video's technology teams are creating best-in-class digital video experience. As a Prime Video team member, you’ll have end-to-end ownership of the product, user experience, design, and technology required to deliver state-of-the-art experiences for our customers. You’ll get to work on projects that are fast-paced, challenging, and varied. You’ll also be able to experiment with new possibilities, take risks, and collaborate with remarkable people. We’ll look for you to bring your diverse perspectives, ideas, and skill-sets to make Prime Video even better for our customers. With global opportunities for talented technologists, you can decide where a career Prime Video Tech takes you! Key job responsibilities The science challenges include: - Heterogeneous customer responses. The same customer responds differently to ads depending on what they’re watching, how engaged they are, and their broader streaming context. We need to understand and predict this variation to make better advertising decisions in real time. - Signal sparsity in streaming. Unlike search or retail advertising, streaming offers no clicks, no conversions, and limited direct feedback. We must develop creative approaches to infer customer preferences, intent, and tolerance from indirect behavioral signals. - Personalization at scale. A one-size-fits-all ad experience leaves value on the table for both customers and the business. We build systems that adapt ad load, placement, and content to individual viewers across 100M+ customers and 100k+ titles. - Small effects, large variance. Ad interventions typically produce 0.1-2% shifts in engagement, effects easily overwhelmed by natural behavioral variance. Measuring, attributing, and optimizing these small signals requires rigorous experimental design and causal methodologies. - Competing objectives. Revenue, customer engagement, long-term retention, and advertiser value are in tension. We develop principled frameworks to navigate these tradeoffs and optimize for sustainable outcomes rather than any single metric. A day in the life - Lead the research and development of ML models that personalize advertising decisions for 100M+ customers across 100k+ titles, with production deployment in mind - Develop deep learning architectures (multi-task learning, embedding-based representations) for customer behavior prediction at scale - Design and analyze large-scale A/B experiments, applying causal inference techniques to measure and optimize the impact of ad strategies on customer engagement and monetization - Partner with engineering to ensure models meet production latency and scalability requirements - Collaborate with product managers to frame business problems as tractable ML problems and translate findings into product decisions - Shape the team’s scientific roadmap, identifying high-impact research directions About the team Prime Video Ads is pioneering the use of Generative AI, Deep Learning and Causal ML to empower the next generation of Ads experience in Prime Video. Our vision is to build the world’s most valuable and differentiated ad-supported streaming platform: one where every ad is relevant to the viewer, and every dollar spent by an advertiser delivers measurable results. We are seeking lead applied scientists who have demonstrated experience in advancing state of the art ML algorithms, particularly in Personalization, Relevance, Casual Inference and Gen-AI areas. Your role will be to deliver these innovations as production-ready systems at Amazon scale.
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