Applied Scientist, Robotics

About the Role

Amazon Robotics is seeking an exceptional Applied Scientist to join our Foundation Models and Agentic AI team. This role presents an opportunity to shape the future of robotics through innovative applications of large vision-language-action (VLA) models, reasoning and task planning models, and reinforcement learning. At Amazon Robotics, we leverage advanced robotics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to solve complex operational challenges at unprecedented scale. Our fleet of robots operates across hundreds of facilities worldwide, working in sophisticated coordination to fulfill our mission of customer excellence.

Key Responsibilities

As an Applied Scientist in the Applied AI and Robotics Foundations Model team, you will:

• Design and implement model architectures, train and fine-tune foundation models using various datasets, and optimize model performance through iterative experiments.
• Process and prepare training data, including data governance, provenance tracking, data quality checks, and creating reusable data pipelines.
• Design and execute experiments to test model capabilities on simulators and embodiments, validate performance across different scenarios, establish baselines, and iteratively improve model performance.
• Write clean, maintainable, well-commented, and documented code; contribute to training infrastructure; create tools for model evaluation and testing; and implement necessary APIs.
• Stay current with latest developments in foundation models and robotics, assist in literature reviews and research documentation, prepare technical reports and presentations, and contribute to research discussions and brainstorming sessions.
• Collaborate closely with senior scientists, engineers, and leaders across multiple teams, participate in knowledge sharing, support integration efforts with robotics hardware teams, and help document best practices and methodologies.

Requirements & Tech Stack

• Publications at top-tier peer-reviewed conferences or journals.
• Experience programming in Java, C++, Python, or a related language.

Qualifications

• Currently has, or is in the process of obtaining, a PhD in computer science, machine learning, engineering, or related fields.
• Master's degree.
• Experience building machine learning models or developing algorithms for business applications.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in state-of-the-art deep learning models architecture design, deep learning training and optimization, and model pruning.
• Experience applying theoretical models in an applied environment.