Director of Applied Science, Alexa AI

Job title: Director of Applied Science, Alexa AI in Bellevue, WA at Amazon
Company: Amazon
Job description: DESCRIPTIONAlexa+ is the groundbreaking cloud-based 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), Multi-Modal Image/Video Understanding/Generation, Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Personalization, Agents, Dialog Management, Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Text -to-Speech, in order to provide the best-possible experience for our customers. We're looking for a Director of Applied Science to help build industry-leading conversational systems and Generative AI technologies that customers love. You will partner with world-class 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 Multi-modal (speech/audio/text/image/video) understanding & generation services, models, data pipelines, tools and platform targeting first and third-party developers. The effort will push the boundaries of machine intelligence combining cutting-edge AI techniques to make building and management of conversational, multi-modal, personalization and recommendation scenarios substantially simpler. If you're as passionate as we are about making Alexa and Echo increasingly awesome for our customers all around the world, we'd love to chat with you! We're 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. You'll hire talented engineers, scientists, technical program managers and bring them together as a team to innovate and deliver. You'll 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 customer-facing 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 top-notch managers, engineers and scientist will be a key focus.BASIC QUALIFICATIONS

• Minimum Bachelor's 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 object-oriented 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 web-scale 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

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience in building complex, real-time software systems involving AI, ML, NLU, and dialog algorithms that have been successfully delivered to customers
• Experience with fine-tuning, evaluating, and deploying large-scale 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 cross-functional projects
• Demonstrated track record of project delivery for large, cross-functional 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 AI-powered systems for large online platforms.
• Stay at the forefront of AI research, evaluate emerging technologies, and incorporate cutting-edge 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 Master's 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., e-commerce, 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 non-technical 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 front-end 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 fast-paced 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 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 you're applying in isn't 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 $262,500/year in our lowest geographic market up to $350,000/year in our highest geographic market. Pay is based on a number of factors including market location and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Amazon is a total compensation company. Dependent on the position offered, equity, sign-on 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.
Expected salary:
Location: Bellevue, WA
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