Applied Scientist - Search Ranking and Exploration

Description

Amazon's Search team creates ML algorithms that connect customers around the world with products that delight them. We harness machine learning at Amazon's scale to make the customer experience easier and smoother. Our impact is large. For example, if your innovations save even 1 minute per customer per year, then for every 100 million customers, you save approximately 190 years of human effort.

Key job responsibilities
As an Applied Scientist on the Search L1 Ranking team, you will build search ranking models that work for thousands of product types, billions of queries, and hundreds of millions of customers spread around the world. You will find the next set of big improvements to ranking, leverage large datasets to understand the complexities of customer behavior, and build ML models that work at Amazon scale. Amazon's Search ranking relies on efficient early stage ranking followed by power final stage ranking models. this role focuses on efficient models for early stage ranking phase, and techniques to personalize these models and optimize them automatically.

A day in the life
Our primary focus is improving search ranking systems. On a day-to-day this means building ML models, analyzing data from your recent A/B tests, and collaborating with partner teams on joint goals. We leverage agentic workflows to improve our scientific velocity, and partner closely with SDEs to bring our ideas to production. You will shape the future of search ranking by presenting proposals to Amazon's business and tech leaders.

About the team
We are a team consisting of ML scientists and software engineers. Our interests span machine learned ranking models, distilled LLMs for efficient inference, personalization techniques to refine the ranking of our models, reinforcement learning to bring the benefits of exploration to search ranking, and infrastructure to make it all happen at scale and efficiently.

Basic Qualifications

- PhD, or Master's degree and 4+ years of CS, CE, ML or related field experience
- Experience programming in Java, C++, Python or related language
- Experience in any of the following areas: algorithms and data structures, parsing, numerical optimization, data mining, parallel and distributed computing, high-performance computing

Preferred Qualifications

- Experience using Unix/Linux
- Experience in professional software development

Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status, disability, or other legally protected status.

Los Angeles County applicants: Job duties for this position include: work safely and cooperatively with other employees, supervisors, and staff; adhere to standards of excellence despite stressful conditions; communicate effectively and respectfully with employees, supervisors, and staff to ensure exceptional customer service; and follow all federal, state, and local laws and Company policies. Criminal history may have a direct, adverse, and negative relationship with some of the material job duties of this position. These include the duties and responsibilities listed above, as well as the abilities to adhere to company policies, exercise sound judgment, effectively manage stress and work safely and respectfully with others, exhibit trustworthiness and professionalism, and safeguard business operations and the Company’s reputation. Pursuant to the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Our inclusive culture empowers Amazonians to deliver the best results for our customers. If you have a disability and need a workplace accommodation or adjustment during the application and hiring process, including support for the interview or onboarding process, please visit https://amazon.jobs/content/en/how-we-hire/accommodations for more information. If the country/region you’re applying in isn’t listed, please contact your Recruiting Partner.

The base salary range for this position is listed below. Your Amazon package will include sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs). Final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience, qualifications, and location. Amazon also offers comprehensive benefits including health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans, EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line, Flexible Spending Accounts, Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage), 401(k) matching, paid time off, and parental leave. Learn more about our benefits at https://amazon.jobs/en/benefits.