Author

Cecilia Chen

Applied Scientist

Latest news

US, CA, San Francisco
Amazon Industrial Robotics is on a mission to redefine the future of automation — and we're looking for exceptional talent to help lead the way. We are building the next generation of advanced robotic systems that seamlessly blend cutting-edge AI, sophisticated control systems, and novel mechanical design to create adaptable, intelligent automation solutions capable of operating safely alongside humans in dynamic, real-world environments. At Amazon Industrial Robotics, we leverage the power of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and advanced robotics to solve some of the most complex operational challenges at a scale unlike anywhere else in the world. Our fleet of robots spans hundreds of facilities globally, working in sophisticated coordination to deliver on our promise of customer excellence — and we're just getting started. As a Sr. Applied Scientist in Robot Perception, you will be at the forefront of this transformation. You will develop and deploy state-of-the-art perception algorithms that enable robots to truly understand and interact with the physical world — bridging the gap between theoretical research and realworld impact. Bringing deep expertise in Computer Vision and a nuanced understanding of the capabilities and limitations of modern Vision-Language Models (VLMs), you will innovate boldly and push the boundaries of what's possible. Our vision for the Perception layer is ambitious: to enable seamless, intelligent interaction between the user, the robot, and its environment. This is a rare opportunity to work at the intersection of deep learning, large language models, and robotics — contributing to research that doesn't just advance the field, but reshapes it. You will collaborate with world-class teams pioneering breakthroughs in dexterous manipulation, locomotion, and humanrobot interaction, all at an unprecedented scale. Key job responsibilities Design, develop, and deploy perception algorithms for robotics systems, including object detection, segmentation, tracking, depth estimation, and scene understanding • Lead research initiatives in computer vision, sensor fusion and 3D perception • Collaborate with cross-functional teams including robotics engineers, software engineers, and product managers to define and deliver perception capabilities • Drive end-to-end ownership of ML models — from data collection and labeling strategy to training, evaluation, and deployment • Mentor junior scientists and engineers; contribute to a culture of technical excellence • Define and track key metrics to measure perception system performance in real-world environments • Publish research findings in top-tier venues (CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ICRA, NeurIPS, etc.) and contribute to patents A day in the life Train ML models for deployment in simulation and real-world robots, identify and document their limitations post-deployment • Drive technical discussions within your team and with key stakeholders to develop innovative solutions to address identified limitations • Actively contribute to brainstorming sessions on adjacent topics, bringing fresh perspectives that help peers grow and succeed — and in doing so, build lasting trust across the team • Mentor team members while maintaining significant hands-on contribution to technical solutions About the team Our Industrial Robotics Group is a diverse group of scientists and engineers passionate about building intelligent machines. We value curiosity, rigor, and a bias for action. We believe in learning from failure and iterating quickly toward solutions that matter.
US, CA, Pasadena
The Amazon Center for Quantum Computing in Pasadena, CA, is looking to hire a Fabrication R&D Scientist with experience in semiconductor process development who will aid in Amazon’s effort to bring cloud quantum computing services to its worldwide customer base. You will join a multi-disciplinary team of scientists, and hardware and software engineers working at the forefront of quantum computing. Through your work inside and outside of the cleanroom environment in the fabrication research and development group, you will solve problems related to developing next-generation quantum processors. Candidates must have a demonstrated background in sound scientific and engineering principles, and must have excellent data analysis, bias for action, problem solving, and communication skills, and be highly motivated and curious to research and learn new technical topics as needed. As a Fab R&D scientist you will be expected to work on new ideas and stay abreast of novel approaches in fabricating and packaging superconducting quantum processors. Working effectively within a team environment is critical. Diverse Experiences Amazon values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all the preferred qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn’t followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don’t let it stop you from applying. Work/Life Balance Our team puts a high value on work-life balance. It isn’t about how many hours you spend at home or at work; it’s about the flow you establish that brings energy to both parts of your life. We believe striking the right balance between your personal and professional life is critical to life-long happiness and fulfillment. We offer flexibility in working hours and encourage you to find your own balance between your work and personal lives. Mentorship & Career Growth We’re continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth’s Best Employer. That’s why you’ll find endless knowledge-sharing, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional. Export Control Requirement Due to applicable export control laws and regulations, candidates must be either 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, or be able to obtain a US export license. If you are unsure if you meet these requirements, please apply and Amazon will review your application for eligibility. Key job responsibilities Responsibilities include developing and optimizing processes to fabricate high-coherence superconducting qubits; developing advanced 3DI interconnect and routing technologies for integrating superconducting quantum technologies; analyzing inline metrology and electrical test data; developing and maintaining integration documentation, design rules, and standard operating procedures; interacting with project leads to provide feedback that continuously improves different processes; staying updated with the latest advancements and industry trends in process integration and apply knowledge to improve processes and drive innovation providing technical guidance and support to junior colleagues, fostering a collaborative and knowledge-sharing work environment. A day in the life The candidate will develop novel technologies using micro-/nano-fabrication techniques inside the cleanroom (independently or in collaboration with other scientists, engineers, and technicians) for next-generation quantum computing. Outside the cleanroom, the candidate will plan experiments, analyze data, and conceive future innovations.
US, CA, Sunnyvale
The Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) team is looking for a passionate, talented, and inventive Member of Technical Staff with a strong deep learning background, to build industry-leading Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) technology with Large Language Models (LLMs) and multimodal systems. Key job responsibilities As a Member of Technical Staff with the AGI team, you will lead the development of algorithms and modeling techniques, to advance the state of the art with LLMs. You will lead the foundational model development in an applied research role, including model training, dataset design, and pre- and post-training optimization. Your work will directly impact our customers in the form of products and services that make use of GenAI technology. You will leverage Amazon’s heterogeneous data sources and large-scale computing resources to accelerate advances in LLMs. About the team The AGI team has a mission to push the envelope in GenAI with LLMs and multimodal systems, in order to provide the best-possible experience for our customers.
GB, London
We are looking for an Economist to work on exciting and challenging business problems related to Amazon Retail’s worldwide product assortment. You will build innovative solutions based on econometrics, machine learning, and experimentation. You will be part of a interdisciplinary team of economists, product managers, engineers, and scientists, and your work will influence finance and business decisions affecting Amazon’s vast product assortment globally. If you have an entrepreneurial spirit, you know how to deliver results fast, and you have a deeply quantitative, highly innovative approach to solving problems, and long for the opportunity to build pioneering solutions to challenging problems, we want to talk to you. Key job responsibilities * Work on a challenging problem that has the potential to significantly impact Amazon’s business position * Develop econometric models and experiments to measure the customer and financial impact of Amazon’s product assortment * Collaborate with other scientists at Amazon to deliver measurable progress and change * Influence business leaders based on empirical findings
US, NY, New York
Amazon Advertising is one of Amazon's fastest growing and most profitable businesses. Our products are used daily to surface new selection and provide customers a wider set of product choices along their shopping journeys. The business is focused on generating value for shoppers as well as advertisers. Our team uses a combination of econometrics, machine learning, and data science to build disruptive products for all our Advertising products. We also generate insights to guide Amazon Advertising strategy, providing direct support to senior leadership. We are looking for an experienced Economist with a deep passion for building econometric solutions and the ability to communicate data insights and scientific vision to execute on strategic projects. Key job responsibilities - Leverage econometrics and ML models to optimize advertising strategies on behalf of our customers. - Influence key business and product decisions based on insights from models you develop. - Perform hands-on analysis and modeling with enormous data sets to develop insights that increase traffic monetization and merchandise sales without compromising shopper experience. - Work closely with software engineers on detailed requirements to productionize the models you build. - Run A/B experiments that affect hundreds of millions of customers, evaluate the impact of your optimizations and communicate your results to various business stakeholders. - Work with other scientists, software developers, and product partners to implement your solutions.
US, WA, Bellevue
The Supply Chain Optimization Technologies (SCOT) team builds technology to automate and optimize Amazon’s supply chain of physical goods. We seek a Data Scientist with strong analytical and communication skills to join our team. SCOT manages Amazon's inventory under uncertainty of demand, pricing, promotions, supply, vendor lead times, and product life cycle. We optimize complex trade-offs between customer experience, inventory costs, fulfillment costs, fulfillment center capacity, etc. We develop sophisticated algorithms that involve learning from large amounts of data such as prices, promotions, similar products, and other data from our product catalog in order to automatically act on millions of dollars’ worth of inventory weekly and establish plans for tens of thousands of employees. As a Data Scientist, you will contribute to the research community, by working with other scientists across Amazon and our Supply Chain, as well as collaborating with academic researchers and publishing papers both internally and externally. Key job responsibilities Major responsibilities include: - Analysis of large amounts of data from different parts of the supply chain and their associated business functions - Improving upon existing machine learning methodologies by developing new data sources, developing and testing model enhancements, running computational experiments, and fine-tuning model parameters for new models - Formalizing assumptions about how models are expected to behave, creating definitions of outliers, developing methods to systematically identify these outliers, and explaining why they are reasonable or identifying fixes for them - Communicating verbally and in writing to business customers with various levels of technical knowledge, educating them about our research, as well as sharing insights and recommendations - Utilizing code (Python, R, Scala, etc.) for analyzing data and building statistical and machine learning models and algorithms A day in the life As a Data Scientist in SCOT, you will be tasked to understand and work with innovative research tools to enable the implementation of sophisticated models on big data. As a successful data scientist in the SCOT team, you are an analytical problem solver who enjoys diving into data from various businesses, is excited about investigations and algorithms, can multi-task, and can credibly interface between scientists, engineers and business stakeholders. Your expertise in synthesizing and communicating insights and recommendations to audiences of varying levels of technical sophistication will enable you to answer specific business questions and innovate for the future. 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: - Medical, Dental, and Vision Coverage - Maternity and Parental Leave Options - Paid Time Off (PTO) - 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!
US, NY, New York
About Sponsored Products and Brands: The Sponsored Products and Brands (SPB) organization at Amazon Ads is re-imagining the advertising landscape through industry leading generative AI technologies, revolutionizing how millions of customers discover products and engage with brands across Amazon.com and beyond. We are at the forefront of re-inventing advertising experiences, bridging human creativity with artificial intelligence to transform every aspect of the advertising lifecycle from ad creation and optimization to performance analysis and customer insights. We are a passionate group of innovators dedicated to developing responsible and intelligent AI technologies that balance the needs of advertisers, enhance the shopping experience, and strengthen the marketplace. If you're energized by solving complex challenges and pushing the boundaries of what's possible with AI, join us in shaping the future of advertising. About Our Team: The Brand Beacon team is responsible for inventing impressions offerings for brands to increase share of voice via premium experiences, helping brands get discovered, acquire new customers and sustainably grow customer lifetime value. We build end-to-end solutions that enable brands to drive discovery, visibility and share of voice. This includes building advertiser controls, shopper experiences, monetization strategies and optimization features. We succeed when (1) shoppers discover, engage and build affinity with brands and (2) brands can grow their business at scale with our advertising products. About This Role: As a Senior Scientist for the team, you will have the opportunity to apply your deep subject matter expertise in the area of ML, LLM and GenAI models. You will invent new product experiences that enable novel advertiser and shopper experiences. This role will liaise with internal Amazon partners and work on bringing state-of-the-art GenAI models to production, and stay abreast of the latest developments in the space of GenAI and identify opportunities to improve the efficiency and productivity of the team. Additionally, you will define a long-term science vision for our advertising business, driven by our customer’s needs, and translate it into actionable plans for our team of applied scientists and engineers. This role will play a critical role in elevating the team’s scientific and technical rigor, identifying and implementing best-in-class algorithms, methodologies, and infrastructure that enable rapid experimentation and scaling. You will communicate learnings to leadership and mentor and grow Applied AI talent across org. * Develop AI solutions for advertiser and shopper experiences. Build monetization and optimization systems that leverage generative models to value and improve campaign performance. * Define a long-term science vision and roadmap for our advertising business, driven from our customers' needs, translating that direction into specific plans for applied scientists and engineering teams. This role combines science leadership, organizational ability, technical strength, product focus, and business understanding. * Design and conduct A/B experiments to evaluate proposed solutions based on in-depth data analyses. * Effectively communicate technical and non-technical ideas with teammates and stakeholders. * Stay up-to-date with advancements and the latest modeling techniques in the field. * Think big about the arc of development of Gen AI over a multi-year horizon and identify new opportunities to apply these technologies to solve real-world problems. #GenAI
US, WA, Seattle
Amazon Industrial Robotics is seeking exceptional applied science talent to develop AI and machine learning systems that will enable the next generation of advanced manufacturing capabilities at unprecedented scale. We're building revolutionary software infrastructure that combines cutting-edge AI, large-scale optimization, and advanced manufacturing processes to create adaptive production control systems. As a Senior Applied Scientist, you will develop and improve machine learning systems that enable real-time manufacturing flow decisions. You will leverage state-of-the-art optimization and ML techniques, evaluate them against representative manufacturing scenarios, and adapt them to meet the robustness, reliability, and performance needs of production environments. You will invent new algorithms where gaps exist. You'll collaborate closely with software engineering, manufacturing engineering, robotics simulation, and operations teams, and your outputs will directly power the systems that determine what to build next, where to allocate resources, and how to maximize throughput. The ideal candidate brings deep expertise in optimization and machine learning, with a proven track record of delivering scientifically complex solutions into production. You are hands-on, writing significant portions of critical-path scientific code while driving your team's scientific agenda. If you're passionate about inventing the intelligent manufacturing systems of tomorrow rather than optimizing those of today, this role offers the chance to make a lasting impact on the future of automation. Key job responsibilities - Identify and devise new scientific approaches for constraint identification, dispatch optimization, WIP release control, and predictive flow intelligence when the problem is ill-defined and new methodologies need to be invented - Lead the design, implementation, and successful delivery of scientifically complex solutions for real-time manufacturing flow optimization in production - Design and build ML models and optimization algorithms including constraint prediction, starvation risk forecasting, and dispatch optimization - Write a significant portion of critical-path scientific code with solutions that are inventive, maintainable, scalable, and extensible - Execute rapid, rigorous experimentation with reproducible results, closing the gap between simulation and real manufacturing environments - Build evaluation benchmarks that measure model performance against manufacturing outcomes including constraint utilization and throughput rather than traditional ML metrics alone - Influence your team's science and business strategy through insightful contributions to roadmaps, goals, and priorities - Partner with manufacturing engineering, robotics simulation, and applied intelligence teams to ensure scientific approaches are grounded in operational reality - Drive your team's scientific agenda and role model publishing of research results at peer-reviewed venues when appropriate and not precluded by business considerations - Actively participate in hiring and mentor other scientists, improving their skills and ability to deliver - Write clear narratives and documentation describing scientific solutions and design choices
US, NY, New York
The Ads Measurement Science team in the Measurement, Ad Tech, and Data Science (MADS) team of Amazon Ads serves a centralized role developing solutions for a multitude of performance measurement products. We create solutions which measure the comprehensive impact of advertiser's ad spend, including sales impacts both online and offline and across timescales, and provide actionable insights that enable our advertisers to optimize their media portfolios. We also own the science solutions for AI tools that unlock new insights and automate high-effort customer workflows, such as custom query and report generation based on natural language user requests. We leverage a host of scientific technologies to accomplish this mission, including Generative AI, classical ML, Causal Inference, Natural Language Processing, and Computer Vision. As a Senior Research Scientist on the team, you will be at the forefront of innovation, developing measurement solutions end-to-end from inception to production. You will set the technical vision and innovate on behalf of our customers. You will propose, design, analyze, and productionize models to provide novel measurement insights to our customers. You will partner with engineering to deploy these solutions into production. You will work with key stakeholders from various business teams to enable advertisers to act upon those metrics. Key job responsibilities * Lead the development of ad measurement models and solutions that address the full spectrum of an advertiser's investment, focusing on scalable and efficient methodologies. * Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams including engineering, product management, and business teams to define and implement measurement solutions. * Use state-of-the-art scientific technologies including Generative AI, Classical Machine Learning, Causal Inference, Natural Language Processing, and Computer Vision to develop state of the art models that measure the impact of ad spend across multiple platforms and timescales. * Drive experimentation and the continuous improvement of ML models through iterative development, testing, and optimization. * Translate complex scientific challenges into clear and impactful solutions for business stakeholders. * Mentor and guide junior scientists, fostering a collaborative and high-performing team culture. * Foster collaborations between scientists to move faster, with broader impact. * Regularly engage with the broader scientific community with presentations, publications, and patents. A day in the life You will solve real-world problems by getting and analyzing large amounts of data, generate business insights and opportunities, design simulations and experiments, and develop statistical and ML models. The team is driven by business needs, which requires collaboration with other Scientists, Engineers, and Product Managers across the advertising organization. You will prepare written and verbal presentations to share insights to audiences of varying levels of technical sophistication. Team video https://advertising.amazon.com/help/G4LNN5YWHP6SM9TJ About the team We are a team of scientists across Applied, Research, Data Science and Economist disciplines. You will work with colleagues with deep expertise in ML, NLP, CV, Gen AI, and Causal Inference with a diverse range of backgrounds. We partner closely with top-notch engineers, product managers, sales leaders, and other scientists with expertise in the ads industry and on building scalable modeling and software solutions.
US, WA, Seattle
Amazon's Stores-Ads Science team operates at the intersection of Amazon's Stores and advertising businesses. We develop causal measurement systems, optimization algorithms, and machine learning models that inform how advertising affects shopper engagement, driving selling partner growth and marketplace economics. Our science shapes decisions both at the strategic level and in production systems. We are a team of interdisciplinary scientists who combine causal inference, economic modeling, and machine learning to drive measurable business impact. We are looking for an Applied Science Manager to lead our Ads Impact initiative. This team owns the science of understanding and optimizing how advertising creates value for shoppers and selling partners. What makes this role distinctive is its position at the frontier of AI and Economics: as Amazon's shopping experience evolves from traditional search toward LLM-powered, agentic commerce, the fundamental mechanisms through which advertising creates value are changing. This role will partner with leading scientists and academic researchers to measure these effects through large-scale causal experimentation, and develop novel methods to encode causal and economic reasoning into AI systems that optimize the shopping experience. Key job responsibilities In this role, you will lead a team of scientists, setting the technical vision and science roadmap for ads impact measurement and optimization. You will design experiments that identify the causal mechanisms through which advertising drives shopper engagement, advertiser value, and marketplace outcomes. You will develop optimization algorithms that integrate these causal signals into production and business decision-making, in close partnership with engineering and product teams across the organization. You will lead the research and communicate findings and recommendations to senior leadership through written narratives that connect technical science to business strategy. This role requires deep expertise in causal inference and experimental design, combined with strong applied ML skills and the engineering judgment to translate research into production systems. You will hire and develop future science leaders, think strategically, set ambitious roadmaps in highly ambiguous problem spaces, and foster a culture that values both intellectual depth and production impact. You will work cross-functionally, influencing across organizational boundaries to drive alignment on complex, multi-sided tradeoffs.