Research and AI Lead
About the job
- At least 8 years of technology-related sales, business development, or equivalent experience.
- Experience building and managing a healthy sales pipeline focused on driving revenue, adoption, and market penetration.
- Experience with C-level sales and strategic partnership building.
- Experience designing and executing joint marketing plans with strategic alliance partners with a global footprint.
- A degree in advanced technology, or at least 5 years of cloud architecture and solution implementation experience.
- Experience collaborating with cross-functional teams including Marketing, Product Management, Customer Service, Operations, Legal, Finance, and Senior Leadership.
- A bachelor's degree in business administration, finance, economics, computer science, data science, engineering, or another related field.
- Own the regional go-to-market strategy for academic research, driving pipeline through direct institutional engagement, account team enablement, and scalable frameworks that business development managers and account teams can replicate across markets.
- Build and maintain executive relationships with chief research officers, university leadership, and relevant government officials; lead executive briefing centers, workshops, and multi-institutional convenings positioning AWS as a strategic research computing partner.
- Understand researcher workflows and connect customer needs to existing AWS solutions; surface recurring product and partner gaps to the solutions architecture and product organizations with documented use cases that justify investment.
- Source and shape flagship research engagements, including migrations, generative AI builds, and high-performance computing expansions, for delivery by solutions architecture and professional services teams, and ensure outcomes are documented as replicable regional models.
- Develop use cases, playbooks, and competitive positioning for education-specific constraints such as data sovereignty, academic calendars, and responsible AI governance.
- Represent AWS externally through keynotes, publications, conferences, and government forums; coordinate internally across product, solutions architecture, partner, marketing, and policy teams to align research go-to-market with broader AWS education priorities.
- Contribute directly to AWS’s global research strategy development by providing feedback informed by regional research communities.
- Coordinate across commercial, nonprofit, healthcare, and government research communities in the region.
- Define repeatable, scalable solutions for research customers, build coalitions across internal teams, partners, and institutional stakeholders, and establish AWS as a long-term strategic partner for research and education transformation.
- Understand technology relevant to the research community, translate researcher needs into cloud benefits, and leverage subject matter experts in procurement, secure research environments, research data management, and AI for science.
- A master's degree or above in public policy or equivalent.
- Familiarity with modern application patterns, including containers, serverless, and microservices, and research-specific infrastructure requirements, including secure enclaves, data sovereignty, and large-scale data management.
- Experience with generative AI, foundation models, and machine learning solutions deployed in research or production environments.
- Experience influencing product roadmaps or shaping service offerings based on customer and market intelligence.
- Experience operating across international regulatory environments, including data sovereignty, procurement frameworks, and academic governance structures.
About the company
Amazon runs the largest online store in the United States and rents cloud computing to businesses and governments through Amazon Web Services. AWS pioneered renting computing power over the internet, and Amazon built its own delivery network to get orders to customers quickly. Shoppers buy from Amazon and from independent sellers on its store, and Prime members pay a subscription for fast free shipping, streaming video and music, and other perks. AWS rents out computing power, storage, databases, and AI tools so companies can run software without owning servers, and Amazon also makes Kindle e-readers and Echo speakers with the Alexa assistant. Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994, and it is based in Seattle, Washington.
Company Size
10,001+
Company Stage
IPO
Headquarters
Seattle, Washington
Founded
1994
Get referred to Amazon
See people who can refer or advise you
Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- AI drives growth: AWS's AI and custom-chip sales each more than doubled, passing $25 billion a year by June 2026.
- Stock grants gained value: shares hit a record in August 2026, making Amazon the fifth company to reach $3 trillion.
- Ads are a third engine beside stores and AWS: they grew 26% to $19.8 billion in the June 2026 quarter.
What critics are saying
- AWS's lead is shrinking: in the June 2026 quarter, Google Cloud grew 82% and Microsoft's Azure 43%, versus AWS's 37%.
- Job security has slipped: Amazon cut 30,000 corporate jobs in October 2025 and January 2026 to reduce management layers.
- Expect five office days a week: Amazon ended its three-day hybrid policy for corporate staff in January 2025.
What makes Amazon unique
- Most of Amazon's profit comes from cloud: AWS made 21% of sales but 60% of operating profit in mid-2026.
- Amazon is America's biggest parcel carrier by volume: it handled 6.9 billion packages in 2025, more than the Postal Service.
- Writing matters more than slides: Amazon meetings open with silent reading of a six-page memo instead of PowerPoint.
Help us improve and share your feedback! Did you find this helpful?
Benefits
Flexible Work Hours
Company Equity
Growth & Insights and Company News
6 month growth
2%1 year growth
2%2 year growth
1%Amazon has launched three Alexa-branded tablets that run Google's Android and carry prices of $229.99 to $549.99, abandoning the low price that defined its Fire line. The Alexa Tablet 8 costs $229.99, the Tablet 11 costs $329.99, and the Tablet 12 Pro starts at $499.99 ($549.99 with an anti-glare Nanomatte finish). The devices have the full Google Play Store, stronger processors, better screens, and aluminium bodies. Apple's standard iPad costs $449, so the Pro now starts above it. Amazon is betting its Alexa+ AI assistant, built into the tablets, will justify the higher price. The move comes as Amazon's global tablet market share fell to 1.9% in the second quarter of 2026 from 8% a year earlier, according to Reuters.
Amazon is closing an unspecified number of grocery partner storefronts on Amazon.com, the company confirmed on Tuesday. It said the move will simplify online shopping and reduce friction, and it will guide shoppers to the best grocery options on its marketplace. Separate storefronts forced shoppers to deal with varying fees, delivery windows, and checkout experiences. Partners have included Winn-Dixie, Metropolitan Markets, and Weis Markets in the US, and Morrisons in Europe. Amazon did not say which partners will be affected. Amazon will instead work with grocers on other services, such as hosting Amazon Lockers and using AWS cloud services. A limited number of jobs are affected, and Amazon is helping those staff find new internal roles. The company offers same-day fresh grocery delivery in more than 2,300 US cities and towns, plus parts of Tokyo and London.
Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft have each unveiled AI devices in the past week, hoping to bring generative AI into homes before the holidays. Analysts expect modest sales for now, as weak consumer sentiment and rising component costs weigh on the market. Microsoft showed a Windows laptop from $2,599 with an RTX Spark chip that runs AI without the cloud. Amazon's largest Alexa Tablet 12 Pro costs $550, and its new Alexa requires a $19.99 monthly subscription or Prime membership. Apple's HomeView smart home hub costs $299 and has a 7-inch screen and facial recognition. Its $1,999 folding iPhone Duo reaches stores next week. IDC analyst Jitesh Ubrani said the aim is to get devices into homes and teach users, laying groundwork for bigger launches.
Peter Thiel's investment firm, Thiel Macro, has 42% of its portfolio in two artificial intelligence stocks, both bought in the second quarter. Amazon makes up 28% and Vistra Energy 14%. Thiel Macro beat the S&P 500 over the last six quarters, despite holding no stocks in two of them. Amazon's cloud unit, Amazon Web Services, grew revenue 37% in the second quarter, its fastest pace in more than four years. The stock trades at 21 times earnings, and analysts' median target of $330 implies 27% upside from $259. Vistra, the largest competitive power producer in the US, signed power deals with Meta Platforms and Amazon. Its median target of $210 implies 29% upside from $162.
Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) shares have fallen 10% since peaking two months ago, which one analyst sees as a buying chance. Concerns over rising AI spending and a rotation out of consumer tech stocks have weighed on the stock, which slightly lags the market in 2026. The business is growing fast. Net sales rose 20% last quarter, the strongest year-over-year jump since 2021. Amazon Web Services (AWS) revenue surged 37% in the second quarter on AI demand; AWS makes up a fifth of revenue but three-fifths of operating profit. North American e-commerce sales rose 16%, helped by Amazon's AI shopping assistant, Rufus. At less than 25 times next year's earnings, the article argues, Amazon's premium is available at a discount.