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Amazon Scholars

The program is designed for academics from universities around the globe who want to work on large-scale technical challenges while continuing to teach and conduct research at their universities.

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Amazon is deeply invested in R&D with hundreds of researchers and applied scientists committed to innovation across every part of the company.

The Amazon Scholars program has broadened opportunities for academics to join Amazon in a flexible capacity, in particular part-time arrangements and sabbaticals.

The program is designed for academics from universities around the globe who want to apply research methods in practice and help us solve hard technical challenges without leaving their academic institutions. We believe that Amazon is a unique place to measure the impact of new scientific ideas, given our scale and our ownership of both an information infrastructure and physical infrastructure. You will have a chance to have a ground-up impact on our systems, our business, and most importantly, our customers, through your expertise.

Applications are accepted from academic experts in research areas including, but not limited to, the following: Artificial Intelligence, Avionics, Computer Vision, Data Science, Economics, Machine Learning, Optimization, Natural Language Processing, Quantum Computing, and Robotics.

As an Amazon Scholar, your responsibilities may include:

  1. Advising business leaders on strategic plans,
  2. Diving deep to solve a specific technical problem in an organization’s roadmap, and
  3. Advising junior researchers on methods.

Program requirements

Basic qualifications:

  • PhD in a relevant field or related discipline
  • 7+ years of relevant work or academic experience
  • Experience leading technical research projects with multiple stakeholders
  • Current affiliation with an academic or research institution

Preferred qualifications:

  • Recognized expert in the external community in an applied science discipline and routinely applies knowledge from other disciplines
  • Publications at top-tier, peer-reviewed conferences and/or journals
  • Broad knowledge of applied mathematics and foundational understanding of algorithms and computational complexity
  • Expert-level research analysis and technical leadership capabilities
  • Expert knowledge in modeling and performance, operationalization, and scalability of scientific techniques and establishing decision strategies
  • Ability to independently lead research development and analysis in a fast-paced environment
  • Proven track record of innovation in creating novel technologies and advancing the state of the art
  • Exceptional verbal and written communication and consensus-building skills with both technical and non-technical audiences

Research locations

Amazon Scholars can work in any Amazon location across the globe where research is being conducted or Amazon has a technical workforce. Scholars can also work remotely, team-permitting.

Amazon has research hubs in the following cities: Aachen, Arlington, Atlanta, Austin, Bay Area, Bangalore, Boston, Barcelona, Beijing, Berlin, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Gdansk, Graz, Haifa, Los Angeles, Luxembourg, New York, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Tel Aviv, Tübingen, Turin, and Vancouver.

How to apply

Accomplished academics who are interested in learning more about how their research may match the challenges, opportunities, and scale of Amazon are encouraged to reach out to academics-interest@amazon.com for more information. Academics who express interest will be contacted if their expertise and experience aligns with current business needs; however, a response is not guaranteed.

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