Join us at the cutting edge of Amazon’s sustainability initiatives to work on environmental and social advancements to support Amazon’s long term worldwide sustainability strategy. At Amazon, we’re working to be the most customer-centric company on earth. To get there, we need exceptionally talented, bright, and driven people. The Worldwide Sustainability (WWS) organization capitalizes on Amazon’s scale & speed to build a more resilient and sustainable company. We manage our social and environmental impacts globally, driving solutions that enable our customers, businesses, and the world around us to become more sustainable. Sustainability Science and Innovation (SSI) is a multi-disciplinary team within the WW Sustainability organization that combines science, analytics, economics, statistics, machine learning, product development, and engineering expertise. We use this expertise and skills to identify, develop and evaluate the science and innovations necessary for Amazon, customers and partners to meet their long-term sustainability goals and commitments. We are seeking a Principal Applied Scientist who is not just adept in the theoretical aspects of Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Large Language Models (LLMs) but also possesses a pragmatic, hands-on approach to navigating the complexities of innovation. You will take the lead in conceptualization, building, and launching innovative models and solutions that significantly drive material impacts for our long-term sustainability and climate goals. You’ll be guided by problems and customer needs. You’ll use strong technical judgment to determine appropriate approaches – custom pre-training models, fine-tuning trusted base models, leveraging retrieval-augmented generation (RAGs), or combining approaches. You’ll collaborate with business leaders, scientists, and engineers to incorporate sustainability domain nuances when creating data foundations, developing AI models/applications, and applying techniques like data indexing, validation metrics, model distillation, and customized loss functions. You’ll work across teams to embed AI/ML solutions and capabilities into existing sustainability data and systems. You’ll define key AI sustainability research directions, adopt/invent new ML techniques, conduct rigorous experiments, publish results, and ensure research translates into practice. You’ll develop long-term strategies, persuade teams, propose goals and deliver. If you see yourself as a hands-on technical leader and innovator at the intersection of AI, technology, and sustainability, we’d like to connect. You don’t need to be an expert in sustainability and climate domains. Key job responsibilities – Creating web-scale sustainability-specific data foundations that align with our impact areas and sustainability goals; – Models to measure environmental and economic impacts at scale; – Automated solutions simplifying complex, labor-intensive ESG tasks; reasoning mechanisms for multi-view decarbonization plans and multi-objective optimization models; – Models to create, monitor, and quality assure high-integrity forest carbon credits. About the team Diverse Experiences: World Wide Sustainability (WWS) values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn’t followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don’t let it stop you from applying. Inclusive Team Culture: It’s in our nature to learn and be curious. Our employee-led affinity groups foster a culture of inclusion that empower us to be proud of our differences. Ongoing events and learning experiences, including our Conversations on Race and Ethnicity (CORE) and AmazeCon (gender diversity) conferences, inspire us to never stop embracing our uniqueness. Mentorship & Career Growth: We’re continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth’s Best Employer. That’s why you’ll find endless knowledge-sharing, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional. Work/Life Balance: We value work-life harmony. Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why flexible work hours and arrangements are part of our culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve. We are open to hiring candidates to work out of one of the following locations: Arlington, VA, USA | New York City, NY, USA | San Francisco, CA, USA | Seattle, WA, USA
