Senior Applied Scientist, Selling Partner Support Engagement

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

Senior Applied Scientist role focused on building and improving AI agents for customer support using reinforcement learning and agentic architectures. The role involves end-to-end research and development, from problem formulation to production deployment, with a focus on preference learning, reward modeling, and policy optimization for conversational agents. It also includes building evaluation frameworks and collaborating with engineering teams to deploy models at scale. The role emphasizes shipping AI agents that autonomously resolve issues and learn from interactions.

What you'd actually do

  1. Own end-to-end research and development of RL-based agent improvement systems — from problem formulation through production deployment and impact measurement.
  2. Design novel approaches to preference learning, reward modeling, and policy optimization in the context of conversational agents operating over real-world tools and APIs.
  3. Build and maintain evaluation frameworks that measure agent quality across multiple dimensions: helpfulness, correctness, safety, and alignment with operational standards.
  4. Collaborate with a team of scientists that work on forefront of Natural Language Understanding, Optimization, Machine Learning and Statistics
  5. Partner with 10+ engineering teams to deploy models into production systems serving sellers worldwide.

Skills

Required

  • 7+ years of applied research experience
  • 5+ years of building machine learning models for business application experience
  • PhD, or Master's degree and 5+ years of applied research experience
  • Experience programming in Java, C++, Python or related language
  • Experience with neural deep learning methods and machine learning

Nice to have

  • Experience with modeling tools such as R, scikit-learn, Spark MLLib, MxNet, Tensorflow, numpy, scipy etc.
  • Experience in a variety of design, wire-framing, and prototyping tools
  • Demonstrated experience leveraging generative AI tools to enhance workflow efficiency and productivity, with the ability to craft effective prompts and critically evaluate AI-generated outputs in a professional setting
  • Experience identifying opportunities to integrate AI solutions into products and services to drive business value.
  • Building and Scaling Agentic System Components like Memory, Retrieval, Reasoning and Tool Calling

What the JD emphasized

  • end-to-end research and development
  • production deployment
  • preference learning
  • reward modeling
  • policy optimization
  • conversational agents
  • real-world tools and APIs
  • evaluation frameworks
  • agent quality
  • massive scale
  • autonomous resolve seller issues
  • learn from every interaction
  • continuously improve with minimal human intervention
  • reason, remember, and adapt
  • understanding the seller's context
  • selecting the right solution
  • routing contacts optimally
  • automating resolution end-to-end
  • augmenting associates with AI
  • human judgment is needed
  • reinforcement learning
  • agentic architectures
  • large-scale production systems
  • real customer pain
  • science solutions
  • operate at massive scale
  • ambiguous business challenges
  • tractable ML problems
  • shipping systems
  • measurably improve millions of seller interactions
  • modeling tools
  • generative AI tools
  • workflow efficiency and productivity
  • craft effective prompts
  • critically evaluate AI-generated outputs
  • professional setting
  • integrating AI solutions into products and services
  • drive business value
  • Building and Scaling Agentic System Components
  • Memory
  • Retrieval
  • Reasoning
  • Tool Calling

Other signals

  • AI agents
  • reinforcement learning
  • agentic architectures
  • large-scale production systems
  • preference learning
  • reward modeling
  • policy optimization
  • conversational agents
  • real-world tools and APIs
  • evaluation frameworks
  • generative AI tools