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Think Big call for proposals — Spring 2025

Advancing the frontiers of science through transformative ideas.

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About this CFP

Amazon invites ambitious research proposals that align with our commitment to transformative innovation. Guided by our leadership principle to Think Big - looking around corners and creating bold direction that inspires results - we seek proposals across all scientific disciplines with visionary, pioneering ideas. While proposals must be grounded in rigorous scientific methodologies, we challenge researchers to transcend current paradigms and envision revolutionary applications.

This call specifically targets research that might be considered speculative or contains out-of-the-box thinking. We welcome proposals including, but not limited to, ideas that:

  1. Challenge fundamental assumptions in your field
  2. Propose novel frameworks for solving long-standing problems
  3. Could enable order-of-magnitude improvements over current approaches
  4. Have the potential to create new technical capabilities
  5. Could open unexplored frontiers in science and technology

This Think Big track complements our standard Amazon Research Awards program. If your Think Big idea aligns with an open Amazon Research Awards call for proposals, submit your proposal directly through that CFP. We welcome proposals here for all topics not covered by open Amazon Research Awards calls for proposal.

Timeline

Submission period: March 19 to May 7, 2025 (11:59PM Pacific Time).
Decision letters will be sent out by August 2025.

Award details

Selected Principal Investigators (PIs) may receive the following:

  1. Unrestricted funds, up to $100,000 USD
  2. AWS Promotional Credits, no more than $70,000 USD on average
  3. Training resources, including tutorials and hands-on sessions with Amazon scientists and engineers

Awards are structured as one-time unrestricted gifts. The budget should include a list of expected costs specified in USD, and should not include administrative overhead costs. The final award amount will be determined by the awards panel.

Eligibility requirements

Please refer to the ARA Program rules on the Rules and Eligibility page.

Proposal requirements

Proposals should be prepared according to the proposal template. In addition, to submit a proposal for this CFP, please also include the following information:

  1. What fundamental challenge or paradigm does your research aim to transform? How does it break from conventional approaches in the field?
  2. What makes this idea potentially transformative rather than incremental? What assumptions or limitations of current approaches does it challenge?
  3. Why is now the right time to pursue this idea? What enabling factors or developments make it timely?
  4. What are key risks and how will you mitigate them?
  5. What are potential applications of your work to Amazon?

Selection criteria

Proposals will be evaluated on the transformative potential of the research, quality of the scientific content and the timeliness/readiness of the research to deliver breakthrough outcomes. We encourage research that uses machine learning tools, for example AWS AI/ML services (Amazon SageMaker, Amazon AI services, Amazon Bedrock) or novel hardware for AI/ML, such as Trainium and Inferentia.

    Expectations from recipients

    To the extent deemed reasonable, Award recipients should acknowledge the support from ARA. Award recipients will inform ARA of publications, presentations, code and data releases, blogs/social media posts, and other speaking engagements referencing the results of the supported research or the Award. Award recipients are expected to provide updates and feedback to ARA via surveys or reports on the status of their research. Award recipients will have an opportunity to work with ARA on an informational statement about the awarded project that may be used to generate visibility for their institutions and ARA.

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    Applied Scientist, Artificial General Intelligence, AGI Data Services
    US, MA, Boston
    The Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) team is seeking a dedicated, skilled, and innovative Applied Scientist with a robust background in machine learning, statistics, quality assurance, auditing methodologies, and automated evaluation systems to ensure the highest standards of data quality, to build industry-leading technology with Large Language Models (LLMs) and multimodal systems. Key job responsibilities As part of the AGI team, an Applied Scientist will collaborate closely with core scientist team developing Amazon Nova models. They will lead the development of comprehensive quality strategies and auditing frameworks that safeguard the integrity of data collection workflows. This includes designing auditing strategies with detailed SOPs, quality metrics, and sampling methodologies that help Nova improve performances on benchmarks. The Applied Scientist will perform expert-level manual audits, conduct meta-audits to evaluate auditor performance, and provide targeted coaching to uplift overall quality capabilities. A critical aspect of this role involves developing and maintaining LLM-as-a-Judge systems, including designing judge architectures, creating evaluation rubrics, and building machine learning models for automated quality assessment. The Applied Scientist will also set up the configuration of data collection workflows and communicate quality feedback to stakeholders. An Applied Scientist will also have a direct impact on enhancing customer experiences through high-quality training and evaluation data that powers state-of-the-art LLM products and services. A day in the life An Applied Scientist with the AGI team will support quality solution design, conduct root cause analysis on data quality issues, research new auditing methodologies, and find innovative ways of optimizing data quality while setting examples for the team on quality assurance best practices and standards. Besides theoretical analysis and quality framework development, an Applied Scientist will also work closely with talented engineers, domain experts, and vendor teams to put quality strategies and automated judging systems into practice.
    Data Scientist, AWS Quick Data
    US, CA, Santa Clara
    Amazon Quick Suite is an enterprise AI platform that transforms how organizations work with their data and knowledge. Combining generative AI-powered search, deep research capabilities, intelligent agents and automations, and comprehensive business intelligence, Quick Suite serves tens of thousands of users. Our platform processes thousands of queries monthly, helping teams make faster, data-driven decisions while maintaining enterprise-grade security and governance. From natural language interactions with complex datasets to automated workflows and custom AI agents, Quick Suite is redefining workplace productivity at unprecedented scale. We are seeking a Data Scientist II to join our Quick Data team, focusing on evaluation and benchmarking data development for Quick Suite features, with particular emphasis on Research and other generative AI capabilities. Our mission is to engineer high-quality datasets that are essential to the success of Amazon Quick Suite. From human evaluations and Responsible AI safeguards to Retrieval-Augmented Generation and beyond, our work ensures that Generative AI is enterprise-ready, safe, and effective for users at scale. As part of our diverse team—including data scientists, engineers, language engineers, linguists, and program managers—you will collaborate closely with science, engineering, and product teams. We are driven by customer obsession and a commitment to excellence. Key job responsibilities In this role, you will leverage data-centric AI principles to assess the impact of data on model performance and the broader machine learning pipeline. You will apply Generative AI techniques to evaluate how well our data represents human language and conduct experiments to measure downstream interactions. Specific responsibilities include: * Design and develop comprehensive evaluation and benchmarking datasets for Quick Suite AI-powered features * Leverage LLMs for synthetic data corpora generation; data evaluation and quality assessment using LLM-as-a-judge settings * Create ground truth datasets with high-quality question-answer pairs across diverse domains and use cases * Lead human annotation initiatives and model evaluation audits to ensure data quality and relevance * Develop and refine annotation guidelines and quality frameworks for evaluation tasks * Conduct statistical analysis to measure model performance, identify failure patterns, and guide improvement strategies * Collaborate with ML scientists and engineers to translate evaluation insights into actionable product improvements * Build scalable data pipelines and tools to support continuous evaluation and benchmarking efforts * Contribute to Responsible AI initiatives by developing safety and fairness evaluation datasets About the team Why AWS? Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. We pioneered cloud computing and never stopped innovating — that’s why customers from the most successful startups to Global 500 companies trust our robust suite of products and services to power their businesses. Inclusive Team Culture Here at AWS, it’s in our nature to learn and be curious. Our employee-led affinity groups foster a culture of inclusion that empower us to be proud of our differences. Ongoing events and learning experiences, including our Conversations on Race and Ethnicity (CORE) and AmazeCon conferences, inspire us to never stop embracing our uniqueness. Mentorship & Career Growth We’re continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth’s Best Employer. That’s why you’ll find endless knowledge-sharing, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional. Work/Life Balance We value work-life harmony. Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why we strive for flexibility as part of our working culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve in the cloud. Hybrid Work We value innovation and recognize this sometimes requires uninterrupted time to focus on a build. We also value in-person collaboration and time spent face-to-face. Our team affords employees options to work in the office every day or in a flexible, hybrid work model near one of our U.S. Amazon offices.
    Applied Scientist III, Alexa Sensitive Content Intelligence (ASCI)
    US, WA, Bellevue
    The Mission Build AI safety systems that protect millions of Alexa customers every day across modalities( text, audio, image, and so on). As conversational AI evolves, you'll solve challenging problems in Responsible AI by ensuring LLMs provide safe, trustworthy responses, building AI systems that understand nuanced human values across cultures, and maintaining customer trust at scale. What You'll Build You'll pioneer breakthrough solutions in Responsible AI at Amazon's scale. Imagine training models that set new safety standards, designing automated evaluation systems that hunt for vulnerabilities before they surface, and certifying the systems that power millions of daily conversations. You'll create intelligent Generative AI systems that judge responses with human-level insight, build models that truly understand what makes interactions safe and delightful, and craft feedback mechanisms that help Alexa+ grasp the nuances of complex customer conversations. Here's where it gets even more exciting: you'll build AI agents that act as your team's safety net—automatically detecting and fixing production issues in real-time, often before anyone notices there was a problem. Your innovations won't just improve Alexa+; they'll fundamentally shape how it learns, evolves, and earns customer trust. As Alexa+ continues to delight customers, your work ensures it becomes more trustworthy, safer, and deeply aligned with customer needs and expectations. Your work directly protects customer trust at Amazon's scale. Every innovation you create—from novel safety mechanisms to sophisticated evaluation techniques—shapes how millions of people interact with AI confidently. You're not just building products; you're defining industry standards for responsible AI. This is frontier research with immediate real-world impact. You'll tackle problems that require innovative solutions: training models that remain truthful and grounded across diverse contexts, building reward models that capture the nuanced spectrum of human values across cultures and languages, and creating automated systems that continuously discover and address potential issues before customers encounter them. You'll collaborate with world-class scientists, product managers, and engineers to transform state-of-the-art ideas into production systems serving millions. What We're Looking For * Deep expertise in advanced computer vision and GenAI models and algorithms for comprehensive visual understanding in RAI domain * Track record of building scalable ML systems across modalities ( text, images and so on) * Provide technical leadership on AI products/features, and develop and mentor junior scientists on the team. * Collaborate with scientists, engineers, product/program managers and other cross-functional teams * Passion for impactful research—where frontier science meets real-world responsibility at scale Ready to work on AI safety challenges that define the industry? Join us. Key job responsibilities This is where you'll make your mark. You'll architect breakthrough Responsible AI solutions that become industry benchmarks, pioneering algorithms that eliminate false information, designing frameworks that hunt down vulnerabilities before bad actors find them, and developing models that understand human values across every culture we serve. Working with world-class engineers and scientists, you'll push the boundaries of model training—transforming bold research into production systems that protect millions of customers daily while withstanding attacks and delivering exceptional experiences. But here's what makes this role truly special: you'll shape the future. You'll lead advance optimization techniques, build evaluation systems that reason like humans, resolve Responsible AI vulnerabilities in Generative AI systems, and mentor the next generation of AI safety experts. Every innovation you drive will set new standards for trustworthy AI at the world's largest scale. A day in the life As a Responsible AI Scientist, you're at the frontier of AI safety—experimenting with breakthrough techniques that push the boundaries of what's possible. You partner with engineering to transform research into production-ready solutions, tackling complex optimization challenges. You brainstorm with Product teams, translating ambitious visions into concrete objectives that drive real impact. Your expertise shapes critical deployment decisions as you review impactful work and guide go/no-go calls. You mentor the next generation of AI safety leaders, watching ideas spark and capabilities grow. This is where science meets impact—building AI that's not just intelligent, but trustworthy and aligned with human values. About the team Our team pioneers Responsible AI for conversational assistants. We ensure Alexa delivers safe, trustworthy experiences across all devices, modalities, and languages worldwide. We work on frontier AI safety challenges—and we're looking for scientists who want to help shape the future of trustworthy AI.
    Applied Scientist II, Alexa Sensitive Content Intelligence (ASCI)
    US, WA, Bellevue
    The Mission Build AI safety systems that protect millions of Alexa customers every day. As conversational AI evolves, you'll solve challenging problems in Responsible AI by ensuring LLMs provide safe, trustworthy responses, building AI systems that understand nuanced human values across cultures, and maintaining customer trust at scale. What You'll Build You'll pioneer breakthrough solutions in Responsible AI at Amazon's scale. Imagine training models that set new safety standards, designing automated testing systems that hunt for vulnerabilities before they surface, and certifying the systems that power millions of daily conversations. You'll create intelligent evaluation systems that judge responses with human-level insight, build models that truly understand what makes interactions safe and delightful, and craft feedback mechanisms that help Alexa+ grasp the nuances of complex customer conversations. Here's where it gets even more exciting: you'll build AI agents that act as your team's safety net—automatically detecting and fixing production issues in real-time, often before anyone notices there was a problem. Your innovations won't just improve Alexa+; they'll fundamentally shape how it learns, evolves, and earns customer trust. As Alexa+ continues to delight customers, your work ensures it becomes more trustworthy, safer, and deeply aligned with customer needs and expectations. Your work directly protects customer trust at Amazon's scale. Every innovation you create—from novel safety mechanisms to sophisticated evaluation techniques—shapes how millions of people interact with AI confidently. You're not just building products; you're defining industry standards for responsible AI. This is frontier research with immediate real-world impact. You'll tackle problems that require innovative solutions: training models that remain truthful and grounded across diverse contexts, building reward models that capture the nuanced spectrum of human values across cultures and languages, and creating automated systems that continuously discover and address potential issues before customers encounter them. You'll collaborate with world-class scientists, product managers, and engineers to transform state-of-the-art ideas into production systems serving millions. What We're Looking For * Deep expertise in state-of-the-art NLP and Large Language Models * Track record of building scalable ML systems * Passion for impactful research—where frontier science meets real-world responsibility at scale * Excitement about solving problems that will shape the future of AI Ready to work on AI safety challenges that define the industry? Join us. Key job responsibilities This is where you'll make your mark. You'll architect breakthrough Responsible AI solutions that become industry benchmarks, pioneering algorithms that eliminate false information, designing frameworks that hunt down vulnerabilities before bad actors find them, and developing models that understand human values across every culture we serve. Working with world-class engineers and scientists, you'll push the boundaries of model training—transforming bold research into production systems that protect millions of customers daily while withstanding attacks and delivering exceptional experiences. But here's what makes this role truly special: you'll shape the future. You'll lead certification processes, advance optimization techniques, build evaluation systems that reason like humans, and mentor the next generation of AI safety experts. Every innovation you drive will set new standards for trustworthy AI at the world's largest scale. A day in the life As a Responsible AI Scientist, you're at the frontier of AI safety—experimenting with breakthrough techniques that push the boundaries of what's possible. You partner with engineering to transform research into production-ready solutions, tackling complex optimization challenges. You brainstorm with Product teams, translating ambitious visions into concrete objectives that drive real impact. Your expertise shapes critical deployment decisions as you review impactful work and guide go/no-go calls. You mentor the next generation of AI safety leaders, watching ideas spark and capabilities grow. This is where science meets impact—building AI that's not just intelligent, but trustworthy and aligned with human values. About the team Our team pioneers Responsible AI for conversational assistants. We ensure Alexa delivers safe, trustworthy experiences across all devices, modalities, and languages worldwide. We work on frontier AI safety challenges—and we're looking for scientists who want to help shape the future of trustworthy AI.
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