Applied Scientist, AWS Identity

About the role

Are you passionate about programming languages, applying formal verification, program analysis, constraint-solving, and/or theorem proving to real world problems? Do you want to create products that help customers? In this role, you will interact with internal teams and external customers to understand their requirements, propose innovative solutions, create software prototypes, and productize prototypes into production systems using software development tools and methodologies. You will also support and scale your solutions to meet growing customer demand.

Responsibilities

• Interact with various teams to develop an understanding of their security and safety requirements.
• Apply acquired knowledge to build tools to find problems or demonstrate the absence of security/safety issues.
• Implement these tools using SAT, SMT, BDDs, and concepts from programming languages, theorem proving, formal verification, and constraint solving.
• Perform analysis of customer systems using tools developed in-house or externally provided.
• Create software prototypes to verify and validate devised solutions; integrate prototypes into production systems using standard software development tools and methodologies.
• Present and defend company-wide technical decisions to internal technical communities and represent the company at technical conferences.
• Act as a functional thought leader, sought after for key technical decisions.
• Successfully sell ideas to executive-level decision makers.
• Mentor and train the research scientist community on complex technical issues.

Qualifications

• PhD or equivalent research experience.
• Experience programming in OCaml, Dafny, Haskell, Kotlin, Lean, Rust, Scala, or related languages.

About the team

The Automated Reasoning in Identity (ARI) team works on applying automated reasoning techniques to services within AWS's Identity organization, building on the success of projects like Zelkova and Access Analyzer. The team is growing rapidly, with increasing reach and more scientists joining.

A day in the life

You will work on cutting-edge technology related to formal methods, automated reasoning, automated testing, and adjacent areas. Collaborating with fellow applied scientists, you will solve challenging problems that improve software quality and provide value to customers. You will also have opportunities to publish your work.

Why AWS

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, pioneering cloud computing and continuously innovating. As part of the AWS Utility Computing (UC) organization, you’ll support the development and management of core services like Compute, Database, Storage, IoT, and more, including specialized security solutions for customers.

Benefits

• Comprehensive health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D, and optional supplemental life plans).
• Mental health support, Employee Assistance Program (EAP), and Medical Advice Line.
• Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) for healthcare and dependent care.
• Adoption and surrogacy reimbursement coverage.
• 401(k) matching.
• Paid time off and parental leave.
• Sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs).
• Formal mentor search application and manager-supported mentorship.
• Ongoing learning, training, and career-advancing resources.
• Inclusive culture with employee-led affinity groups, events, and conferences (e.g., CORE, AmazeCon).

Pay

Base salary range: $142,800 – $193,200 USD annually (location: USA, VA, Arlington). Final compensation will be determined based on experience, qualifications, and location.