Applied Scientist, Conversational Assistant Modeling and Learning

Alexa AI is looking for an Applied Scientist to build Alexa Amazons LLM-powered conversational assistant. You will work on key initiatives spanning large language model fine-tuning alignment agentic reasoning and evaluation directly shaping the experience for hundreds of millions of customers worldwide.

A successful candidate will be a self-starter comfortable with ambiguity strong attention to detail and the ability to work in a fast-paced ever-changing environment. As an Applied Scientist you will own the design and development of end-to-end systems. Youll have the opportunity to create technical roadmaps and drive production level projects that will support Amazon Science. You will work closely with other scientists and engineers to develop solutions and deploy them into production. The ideal scientist must have the ability to work with diverse groups of people and cross-functional teams to solve complex business problems.

Key job responsibilities
* Improve the efficiency of LLM VLM and agent training and evaluation pipelines including distributed training inference serving data loading checkpointing memory usage and GPU utilization.
* Design implement and evaluate novel approaches to LLM fine-tuning alignment (RLHF DPO) and distillation for production deployment
* Architect agentic systems multi-step reasoning tool use planning and orchestration
* Develop evaluation frameworks and methodologies that go beyond standard benchmarks to capture real-world conversational quality
* Translate research advances into customer-facing products working closely with engineering product and cross-functional science teams
* Publish results at top-tier venues and represent Amazon in the broader research community

About the team
Alexa AI is building the science and technology behind Alexa Amazons next-generation conversational assistant. Our team works at the intersection of large language models reinforcement learning agentic architectures and multilingual/multimodal understanding. We operate at massive scale our models serve customers across dozens of languages and device types. If you want to push the frontier of conversational AI and see your work used by people every day come join us.

- Masters degree or above in computer science machine learning engineering or related fields
- 3 years of programming in Java C Python or related language experience
- 1 years experience with distributed training frameworks such as VeRL Megatron FSDP DeepSpeed Ray or similar systems and inference engines such as vLLM TensorRT-LLM Triton SGLang TGI.
- 3 years experience with modeling languages and tools like PyTorch / TensorFlow R scikit-learn numpy scipy etc.
- Solid ML background and familiar with NLU NLG and LLM training and evaluation.

- PhD in computer science machine learning engineering or related fields
- 3 years experience with distributed training frameworks such as verl Megatron FSDP DeepSpeed Ray or similar systems and inference engines such as vLLM TensorRT-LLM Triton SGLang TGI.
- Publications at peer-reviewed NLP/ML conferences (e.g. ACL EMNLP NAACL NeurIPS ICLR ICML AAAI etc.)
- Scientific thinking and the ability to invent a track record of thought leadership and contributions that have advanced the field.

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

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 WA Bellevue - 142800.00 - 193200.00 USD annually