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ARA Program Rules

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Last updated: March 26, 2025

By applying to or participating in the Amazon Research Awards Program (the “ARA Program”), you (defined below) agree to the following rules (“Rules”). These Rules are solely between Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates (“Amazon”, “we”, “us”, or “our”) and the entity that you represent (“you” or “your”), including the lead researcher/s who applies to the ARA Program (the “Principal Investigator”) and any members of the research team. Capitalized terms not defined herein may be defined in the AWS Agreements (as defined below). You and/or the Principal Investigator are responsible for distributing these Rules to all members of the research team before they participate in any research in connection with a proposal funded by the ARA Program.

I. Eligibility Requirements

To be eligible for an ARA Program award (“Award”), the Principal Investigator must be (1) either a full-time faculty member at an accredited academic institution or a permanent researcher at a non-governmental organization with recognized legal status in its country (equivalent to 501(c)(3) status under the United States Internal Revenue Code) and (2) at or above the age of majority in their jurisdiction of residence at the time of application. Each Principal Investigator is permitted to submit only one proposal to the ARA Program per call for proposal period.

By submitting your proposal to the ARA Program, you represent that your Principal Investigator:

(a) is not a paid employee of a government entity (other than an accredited academic institution);

(b) is not under US export controls or sanctions;

(c) has not been a director, officer, employee, intern or contractor of Amazon within the 12 months preceding submission of your proposal to the ARA Program (“Ineligible Personnel”);

(d) is not a member of the immediate family or household of Ineligible Personnel; and

(e) has not participated in or had decision-making authority over any cloud infrastructure procurements involving Amazon.

The ARA Program is void in Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea and the Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk regions of Ukraine, and where otherwise prohibited by law.

Amazon employees, including employees of Amazon Web Services, Inc. (“AWS”), are not eligible to receive an Award.

Amazon is not responsible for your internal organizational policies and procedures that may restrict your (including the Principal Investigator’s) ability to submit a proposal to the ARA Program.

II. Application Content

No proposal to the ARA Program may contain any confidential information and no part may be marked as ‘confidential.’ Amazon does not accept any legal obligation (whether of confidentiality, compensation, return or otherwise) with respect to any proposals. Amazon reserves the right to implement competitive, similar, or identical ideas in the future, without restriction or obligation. You understand and acknowledge that Amazon has wide access to technology, designs, and other materials, and may work on and/or develop projects and ideas that may be competitive with, similar to, or identical to your proposal in theme, idea, format or other respects, inclusive. You acknowledge and agree that you will not be entitled to any compensation as a result of Amazon’s use of any such similar or identical material that has or may come to Amazon from other sources.

You represent and warrant that your proposal:

(a) is either your original work or an update to your original work;

(b) does not, to your knowledge, infringe any third-party patent rights; and

(c) does not, to your knowledge, infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate any other third-party intellectual property rights (i.e., other than patent rights), including any copyrights, trade secrets, trademarks, contract or licensing rights, rights of publicity or privacy, or moral rights.

III. Awards

Proposals selected for funding will receive an Award that may include cash, Promotional Credit (as defined in the AWS Promotional Credit Terms & Conditions), or both. Award funding is not extendable or transferable without our written consent, but you may submit new proposals for subsequent ARA Program calls.

All Award amounts will be determined by Amazon in its sole discretion. Any cash component of an Award:

(a) will be structured as a one-time unrestricted gift to your Principal Investigator’s academic institution or organization;

(b) will be provided directly to your academic institution or organization for distribution and management; and

(c) may not be used for indirect expenses which are not allocable, reasonable, adequately documented, and consistent with established policies and practices of your academic institution or organization.

You are responsible for the administration and apportionment of any costs and expenses associated with an Award, including any allowable and allocable overhead or indirect costs. In order to process any cash Award, you will be required to complete administrative requirements, which may include submitting a W-9 form to us, completing a tax questionnaire, and registering in Amazon’s Payee Central System. If you do not fulfill the administrative requirements for processing cash Awards within two years of your receipt of an Award notification, Amazon reserves the right to withhold payment. Any payment from Amazon to you under the Award may be issued by a purchase order. Except where prohibited by law, you are responsible for all taxes (including income tax and value added tax) that may be imposed on you by relevant local tax authorities.

These Rules, the agreements referenced herein, and any other agreement regarding the relationship between you and Amazon will constitute a Master Agreement under the terms of the purchase order.

IV. AWS Customer Agreement and AWS Promotional Credit Terms & Conditions

Amazon may make available to you an amount of AWS promotional computing credits (“AWS Credits”) for use in support of this Agreement. AWS Credits provided to University under this Agreement are subject to the AWS Promotional Credit Terms and Conditions (as may be updated from time to time on the AWS website). You acknowledge and agree that any use of AWS services, including but not limited to use of AWS Credits, is subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the AWS Customer Agreement (https://aws.amazon.com/agreement/), and/or any separate, bespoke agreement that you have entered into with Amazon governing use of AWS services (collectively, the “AWS Agreements”). In the event of any conflict between this Agreement and the AWS Agreements, the terms of the AWS Agreements shall take precedence.

V. Privacy

You acknowledge and agree that we may collect, store, share, and otherwise use personally identifiable information provided during the ARA Program application process, including but not limited to, name, mailing address, phone number, and email address. All personally identifiable information collected is subject to, and will be used in accordance with, the Amazon Privacy Notice, including for administering the ARA Program and verifying applicants’ identities, addresses, and telephone numbers in the event a proposal is selected for funding. By participating in the ARA Program, you consent to the transfer of personal data to the United States for purposes of administering the ARA Program, conducting publicity about the ARA Program, and additional purposes that are consistent with goals relating to the ARA Program. The data controller for information collected by us is Amazon.com, Inc., 410 Terry Ave North, Seattle, Washington 98109, USA.

VI. Publicity

Except where prohibited, you consent to our use of your name and the Principal Investigator’s name and title, proposal title, and proposal abstract text for purposes of identifying Amazon’s support of you, the Principal Investigator, the proposal and/or the ARA Program.

You may acknowledge our support by stating that your research is supported by the ARA Program (e.g., “Research reported in this [publication/press release] was supported by an Amazon Research Award, [Cycle /Year].”). Any use of Amazon or AWS logos is subject to the Amazon Trademark Guidelines and AWS Trademark Guidelines, respectively. Any other use of Amazon or AWS logos requires Amazon’s or such affiliate’s prior written consent. You must receive Amazon’s prior written consent before issuing a press release or making any public disclosure regarding your participation in the ARA Program. You agree not to misrepresent or embellish the relationship between us and you. You will not imply any relationship or affiliation between us and you except as expressly permitted by these Rules.

VII. Limitation of Liability

TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, YOU ACCEPT THE CONDITIONS STATED IN THESE RULES, AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE DECISIONS OF AMAZON, AND WARRANT THAT YOU ARE ELIGIBLE TO PARTICIPATE IN THE ARA PROGRAM. TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, YOU, EACH RESEARCH TEAM MEMBER, THE PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR AND THE PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR’S INSTITUTION HEREBY RELEASES AMAZON FROM, AND WAIVES ANY AND ALL CLAIMS AGAINST AMAZON FOR, ANY LOSSES, LIABILITY, AND DAMAGES OF ANY KIND, (INCLUDING FOR ANY LOSS OF DATA, LOST PROFITS, COST OF COVER OR OTHER SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, INDIRECT, PUNITIVE, EXEMPLARY OR RELIANCE DAMAGES) INCURRED OR SUSTAINED IN CONNECTION WITH OR ARISING OUT OF (1) THE ARA PROGRAM OR ANY TRAVEL OR ACTIVITY RELATED THERETO, (2) USE OF ANY PROPOSAL OR RIGHTS THEREIN, OR (3) ANY BREACH OF ANY AGREEMENT OR WARRANTY ASSOCIATED WITH THE ARA PROGRAM, INCLUDING THESE RULES, HOWEVER CAUSED AND REGARDLESS OF THEORY OF LIABILITY.

VIII. Changes

We may amend any of these Rules at our sole discretion by posting the revised terms on the ARA Program website. Your continued participation in the ARA Program after the effective date of the revised Rules constitutes your acceptance of the rules.

IX. Disputes

Any dispute or claim relating in any way to the ARA Program will be resolved in accordance with terms set forth in the AWS Agreements.

X. Representations and Warranties

You represent and warrant that:

(a) your receipt of any Award is neither prohibited by nor inconsistent with any applicable laws, regulations, or binding orders, including applicable ethics rules or internal institutional rules;

(b) you have completed or will complete all legal and ethical requirements necessary to accept the Award;

(c) your receipt of the Award will not knowingly create a conflict of interest for Amazon;

(d) the Principal Investigator has not participated in, nor had, and do not anticipate participating in or having, any decision-making authority over, any procurements or purchasing decisions involving Amazon on behalf of your organization during the previous or upcoming twelve (12) months; and

(e) you will properly book and record the Award in your accounting documents in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.

In the event that your representations and warranties under this section are or become inaccurate, you must notify us immediately (research-awards@amazon.com) and any Award your organization receives will be voidable.

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US, NY, New York
We are seeking an Applied Scientist to lead the development of evaluation frameworks and data collection protocols for robotic capabilities. In this role, you will focus on designing how we measure, stress-test, and improve robot behavior across a wide range of real-world tasks. Your work will play a critical role in shaping how policies are validated and how high-quality datasets are generated to accelerate system performance. You will operate at the intersection of robotics, machine learning, and human-in-the-loop systems, building the infrastructure and methodologies that connect teleoperation, evaluation, and learning. This includes developing evaluation policies, defining task structures, and contributing to operator-facing interfaces that enable scalable and reliable data collection. The ideal candidate is highly experimental, systems-oriented, and comfortable working across software, robotics, and data pipelines, with a strong focus on turning ambiguous capability goals into measurable and actionable evaluation systems. Key job responsibilities - Design and implement evaluation frameworks to measure robot capabilities across structured tasks, edge cases, and real-world scenarios - Develop task definitions, success criteria, and benchmarking methodologies that enable consistent and reproducible evaluation of policies - Create and refine data collection protocols that generate high-quality, task-relevant datasets aligned with model development needs - Build and iterate on teleoperation workflows and operator interfaces to support efficient, reliable, and scalable data collection - Analyze evaluation results and collected data to identify performance gaps, failure modes, and opportunities for targeted data collection - Collaborate with engineering teams to integrate evaluation tooling, logging systems, and data pipelines into the broader robotics stack - Stay current with advances in robotics, evaluation methodologies, and human-in-the-loop learning to continuously improve internal approaches - Lead technical projects from conception through production deployment - Mentor junior scientists and engineers About the team Fauna Robotics, an Amazon company, is building capable, safe, and genuinely delightful robots for everyday life. Our goal is simple: make robots people actually want to live and interact with in everyday human spaces. We believe that future won’t arrive until building for robotics becomes far more accessible. Today, too much effort is spent reinventing the fundamentals. We’re changing that by developing tightly integrated hardware and software systems that make it faster, safer, and more intuitive to create real-world robotic products. Our work spans the full stack: mechanical design, control systems, dynamic modeling, and intelligent software. The focus is not just functionality, but experience. We’re building robots that feel responsive, expressive, and genuinely useful. At Fauna, you’ll work at the frontier of this space, helping define how robots move, manipulate, and interact with people in natural environments. It’s an opportunity to solve hard problems across hardware and software with a team focused on making robotics accessible and joyful to build. If you care about making robotics real for everyone and building systems that are as delightful as they are capable, we’re interested in hearing from you.
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US, WA, Seattle
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Sr. Applied Scientist, Last Mile Science
IN, KA, Bangalore
Have you ever ordered a product on Amazon and when that box with the smile arrived you wondered how it got to you so fast? Have you wondered where it came from and how much it cost Amazon to deliver it to you? If so, the WW Amazon Logistics, Business Analytics team is for you. We manage the delivery of tens of millions of products every week to Amazon’s customers, achieving on-time delivery in a cost-effective manner. We are looking for an enthusiastic, customer obsessed, Sr. Applied Scientist with good analytical skills to help manage projects and operations, implement scheduling solutions, improve metrics, and develop scalable processes and tools. The primary role of an Operations Research Scientist within Amazon is to address business challenges through building a compelling case, and using data to influence change across the organization. This individual will be given responsibility on their first day to own those business challenges and the autonomy to think strategically and make data driven decisions. Decisions and tools made in this role will have significant impact to the customer experience, as it will have a major impact on how the final phase of delivery is done at Amazon. Ideal candidates will be a high potential, strategic and analytic graduate with a PhD in (Operations Research, Statistics, Engineering, and Supply Chain) ready for challenging opportunities in the core of our world class operations space. Great candidates have a history of operations research, and the ability to use data and research to make changes. This role requires robust program management skills and research science skills in order to act on research outcomes. This individual will need to be able to work with a team, but also be comfortable making decisions independently, in what is often times an ambiguous environment. Responsibilities may include: - Develop input and assumptions based preexisting models to estimate the costs and savings opportunities associated with varying levels of network growth and operations - Creating metrics to measure business performance, identify root causes and trends, and prescribe action plans - Managing multiple projects simultaneously - Working with technology teams and product managers to develop new tools and systems to support the growth of the business - Communicating with and supporting various internal stakeholders and external audiences
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