Director of Applied Science Alexa AI

Alexa is the groundbreaking cloudbased intelligent agent that powers Echo and other devices designed around your voice. Our mission is to push the envelope in Artificial Intelligence (AI) Large Language Models (LLMs) MultiModal Image/Video Understanding/Generation Natural Language Understanding (NLU) Personalization Agents Dialog Management Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Text toSpeech in order to provide the bestpossible experience for our looking for a Director of Applied Science to help build industryleading conversational systems and Generative AI technologies that customers love. You will partner with worldclass technical leaders engineers scientists and data analysts across the organization who have expertise in a wide range of disciplines.


Key job responsibilities
As a Director of Applied Science within the Alexa AI team you will be responsible for leading multiple engineering science program management teams and drive the design development testing and deployment of scalable Multimodal (speech/audio/text/image/video) understanding & generation services models data pipelines tools and platform targeting first and thirdparty developers. The effort will push the boundaries of machine intelligence combining cuttingedge AI techniques to make building and management of conversational multimodal personalization and recommendation scenarios substantially simpler. If youre as passionate as we are about making Alexa and Echo increasingly awesome for our customers all around the world wed love to chat with you! Were seeking highly talented driven and motivated technical leaders with big ideas who are also obsessed with finding new intuitive and engaging ways to interact with our customers.

You will build and manage the roadmap for future product development in the area including new services new features for existing services operational improvements for existing services and language and country expansion. In this role you will have a chance to interact with all internal Alexa teams third party skill developers large Alexa customers and enterprises and use their feedback to drive innovation. Youll hire talented engineers scientists technical program managers and bring them together as a team to innovate and deliver. Youll help set and will be expected to deliver on aggressive goals for adoption operational performance and feature delivery.

You must have an established background in delivering customerfacing solutions strong technical skills excellent project management skills great communication skills and a motivation to achieve results in a fast paced environment. You are a strong leader who can prioritize well communicate clearly and compellingly and who understands how to drive a high level of focus and excellence within a team.

Responsibilities include direct management of engineering and science managers and senior engineers and scientists strategic planning product definition customer communication project management for software within the team and quality of software development process for machine learning systems. Additionally as our organization is growing hiring topnotch managers engineers and scientist will be a key focus.

Minimum Bachelors Degree in Computer Science or a related field
10 years of experience in software development and building production software systems
At least 7 years of experience managing software development teams and managers
Must be skilled in Computer Science fundamentals such as objectoriented design algorithm design data structures problem solving and complexity analysis
Experience building customer and developer facing products and services
Knowledge of professional software engineering practices for the full software development life cycle including coding standards code reviews source control management build processes testing and operations
Knowledge and experience with delivering enterprise software and/or services
Knowledge and experience with webscale services and distributed systems
Excellent written and verbal technical communication with an ability to present complex technical information in a clear and concise manner to a variety of audiences

Experience in building complex realtime software systems involving AI ML NLU and dialog algorithms that have been successfully delivered to customers
Experience with finetuning evaluating and deploying largescale LLMs (e.g. GPT Llama Claude etc. in production environments.
Experience with building large scale personalization and recommendation systems.
Strong project management experience desired for working on crossfunctional projects
Demonstrated track record of project delivery for large crossfunctional projects with evolving requirements
Lead mentor and grow a team of applied scientists and engineers focused on Generative AI LLMs and related technologies.
Collaborate with product engineering and business stakeholders to define and prioritize AI initiatives aligned with company goals.
Guide the design and architecture of scalable AIpowered systems for large online platforms.
Stay at the forefront of AI research evaluate emerging technologies and incorporate cuttingedge advancements to maintain a competitive edge.
Foster a culture of innovation scientific rigor and collaboration across teams.
Ensure responsible AI practices including ethical considerations fairness and transparency are embedded in all stages of development.
Ph.D. or Masters degree in Computer Science Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence or a related field.
10 years of experience in applied science roles with at least 3 years leading teams.
Strong expertise in Generative AI Large Language Models (LLMs) deep learning frameworks and NLP techniques.
Proven track record of delivering AI/ML products at scale in large online systems (e.g. ecommerce social platforms cloud services or similar).
Deep understanding of system design distributed systems cloud platforms and data pipelines.
Strong leadership people management and mentoring skills with a passion for developing talent.
Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence technical and nontechnical stakeholders.
Demonstrated ability to lead and mentor other Senior Managers and software developers and scientists to maintain architectural vision and software quality while building and maintaining high agility high morale and low to zero process teams
Ability to take a project from requirements gathering and design to actual product launch
Experience in building SDKs and Developer Tools in various programming languages like Java Javascript or Python is preferred.
Experience with frontend technologies (JavaScript CSS HTML jQuery AJAX MVC/MVMM and libraries or frameworks such as Backbone Knockout React or Angular) is highly desirable
Ability to work in a fastpaced environment with minimal process and maximum productivity
Experience developing cloud software services and an understanding of design for scalability performance and reliability
Proven track record of building and managing high performing engineering teams.
Exceptional customer relationship skills including the ability to discover the true requirements underlying feature requests recommend alternative technical and business approaches and lead engineering efforts to meet aggressive timelines with optimal solutions
Most of all: enthusiasm creativity and inventiveness! You will be asked to find new ways to solve challenging problems every day

Amazon is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race national origin gender gender identity sexual orientation protected veteran status disability age or other legally protected status.

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 for more information. If the country/region youre applying in isnt listed please contact your Recruiting Partner.

Our compensation reflects the cost of labor across several US geographic markets. The base pay for this position ranges from $262500/year in our lowest geographic market up to $350000/year in our highest geographic market. Pay is based on a number of factors including market location and may vary depending on jobrelated knowledge skills and experience. Amazon is a total compensation company. Dependent on the position offered equity signon payments and other forms of compensation may be provided as part of a total compensation package in addition to a full range of medical financial and/or other benefits. For more information please visit This position will remain posted until filled. Applicants should apply via our internal or external career site.