Principal Applied Scientist, Secure Work Enablement

Amazon Amazon · Big Tech · Seattle, WA · Applied Science

This Principal Applied Scientist role focuses on advancing an agentic AI system (WorkSpaces Advisor) for troubleshooting. The scientist will define the technical roadmap, drive breakthroughs in reasoning and planning under uncertainty, and build ML foundations for an autonomous agent. Responsibilities include architecting agentic reasoning systems, designing planning and orchestration frameworks, developing causal inference models, building continuous learning systems with RLHF and RAG, pioneering natural language reasoning, and establishing evaluation frameworks and safety mechanisms. The role also involves influencing broader AI strategy and contributing to the scientific community.

What you'd actually do

  1. Set the scientific vision and long-term research agenda: Define what "best-in-class agentic troubleshooting" looks like scientifically, identify the key unsolved problems, and chart a multi-year path to solving them — securing buy-in from VP-level leadership.
  2. Deliver breakthrough solutions on highly ambiguous problems: Independently identify, frame, and solve novel research challenges in agentic AI for troubleshooting — problems where neither the approach nor the success criteria are pre-defined.
  3. Influence and align across the organization: Drive scientific alignment across product, engineering, and business teams. Translate complex ML concepts into actionable product strategy. Represent the science team in leadership forums and planning cycles.
  4. Build and elevate scientific excellence: Mentor scientists and engineers across the team. Establish best practices for experimentation, evaluation, and deployment of agentic systems. Set the standard for scientific rigor and code quality.
  5. Deliver end-to-end production systems with outsized business impact: Own the full lifecycle from research to deployment for Advisor's core intelligence — making pragmatic trade-offs between long-term invention and near-term delivery while ensuring measurable customer and business outcomes.
  6. Advance the state of the art: Contribute to the external scientific community through publications, patents, and engagement that positions AWS as a leader in autonomous AI operations — bringing outside-in innovation back into Advisor.

Skills

Required

  • predictive modeling and analysis
  • PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, or a related technical field
  • distilling informal customer requirements into problem definitions, dealing with ambiguity and competing objectives
  • Java, C++, Python or related language
  • leading experienced scientists
  • developing junior members

Nice to have

  • 10+ years of relevant work in industry or academia experience
  • Knowledge of problem solving, algorithm design and complexity analysis
  • Experience creating novel algorithms and advancing the state of the art
  • Have peer-reviewed scientific contributions in premier journals and conferences

What the JD emphasized

  • agentic AI system
  • autonomous agent
  • reasoning across complex system states
  • orchestrating multi-step remediation workflows
  • continuously learning from outcomes
  • scientific direction for agentic AI
  • frontier of autonomous troubleshooting
  • self-healing systems
  • diagnose root causes across complex, multi-signal environments
  • planning and orchestration frameworks
  • compose multi-step remediation actions
  • human-in-the-loop guardrails
  • causal inference models
  • continuous learning systems
  • reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF)
  • outcome-driven reward signals
  • retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)
  • natural language reasoning capabilities
  • explain its diagnostic process
  • collaborative problem-solving dialogue
  • evaluation frameworks
  • safety mechanisms
  • autonomous actions
  • confidence thresholds
  • escalation policies
  • rollback strategies
  • autonomous IT operations
  • novel research challenges
  • ambiguous problems
  • highly ambiguous problems
  • peer-reviewed scientific contributions in premier journals and conferences

Other signals

  • agentic AI system
  • autonomous agent
  • reasoning across complex system states
  • orchestrating multi-step remediation workflows
  • continuously learning from outcomes
  • scientific direction for agentic AI
  • frontier of autonomous troubleshooting
  • self-healing systems
  • diagnose root causes across complex, multi-signal environments
  • planning and orchestration frameworks
  • compose multi-step remediation actions
  • human-in-the-loop guardrails
  • causal inference models
  • continuous learning systems
  • reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF)
  • outcome-driven reward signals
  • retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)
  • natural language reasoning capabilities
  • explain its diagnostic process
  • collaborative problem-solving dialogue
  • evaluation frameworks
  • safety mechanisms
  • autonomous actions
  • confidence thresholds
  • escalation policies
  • rollback strategies
  • autonomous IT operations