Principal Applied Scientist , Personalized Autonomy and Proactive Intelligence (PAPI)

About the role

The Principal Applied Scientist will own the science mission for building next-generation proactive and autonomous agentic experiences across Alexa AI's Personalization, Autonomy and Proactive Intelligence organization.

Responsibilities

• Technically lead a team of applied scientists to harness state-of-the-art technologies in machine learning, natural language processing, LLM training and application, and agentic AI systems to advance the scientific frontiers of autonomous intelligence and proactive user assistance.
• Identify promising research directions in agentic AI, develop novel autonomous agent solutions, and translate advanced AI research into production-ready agentic systems.
• Influence and collaborate with partner teams, launch AI-powered autonomous agents into production, and build team mechanisms that foster innovation and execution in the rapidly evolving field of agentic AI.
• Shape the technical strategy for making Alexa a truly proactive and autonomous agent that anticipates user needs, takes intelligent actions, and provides seamless assistance without explicit prompting.
• Lead the development of breakthrough capabilities that enable Alexa to proactively anticipate user needs through advanced predictive modeling and contextual understanding; autonomously execute complex multi-step tasks with minimal user intervention; reason and plan intelligently across diverse user goals and environmental contexts; learn and adapt continuously from user interactions to improve agentic behaviors; and coordinate actions seamlessly across multiple domains and services as a unified intelligent agent.

Requirements

• M.S. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field.
• 10+ years experience in natural language processing, machine learning, recommendation, search, multimodal AI, or a related field.
• Proven track record of leading and managing science and engineering teams in building complex, real-time systems involving AI, ML, NLP with successful delivery to customers.
• Demonstrated track record of project delivery for large, cross-functional projects with evolving requirements.
• Exceptional customer relationship skills including the ability to discover the true requirements underlying feature requests, recommend alternative technical and business approaches, and lead combined science and engineering efforts to meet timelines with optimal solutions.

Qualifications

• Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field.
• 10+ years experience in recommendations, search, natural language processing, machine learning, deep learning, Generative AI, Agentic AI or a related field.
• Demonstrated ability to push the envelope in at least one machine learning domain (e.g. deep learning, NLP, reinforcement learning).
• Expertise in large language models or demonstrated ability to develop this expertise quickly.
• 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.
• Expertise in end-consumer AI experiences, ideally with learning/experiential offerings.
• Demonstrated track record of peer-reviewed scientific publications that advance state-of-the art for applied science.