Senior Applied Scientist – Conversational AI

About the role

As a Senior Applied Scientist on the Alexa AI team, you will shape the scientific roadmap for next‑generation conversational AI powered by large language models. Your work will directly influence how millions of customers interact with Alexa across languages and devices.

Key responsibilities

• Define and drive the science roadmap for LLM‑based conversational capabilities.
• Design, implement, and evaluate novel approaches to LLM fine‑tuning, alignment (RLHF, DPO, RLVR) and model distillation for production.
• Architect agentic systems that support multi‑step reasoning, tool use, planning and orchestration at scale.
• Develop evaluation frameworks that go beyond standard benchmarks to capture real‑world conversational quality.
• Translate research advances into customer‑facing features, collaborating with engineering, product and cross‑functional science teams.
• Own end‑to‑end delivery of ambiguous research initiatives from problem formulation through experimentation to production deployment.
• Publish in top‑tier conferences, present internally and externally, and generate patents.

Required profile

• PhD or equivalent experience in machine learning, NLP or a related field.
• Proven track record of leading research projects from concept to production at scale.
• Strong publication record and experience filing patents.
• Ability to work cross‑functionally with engineering and product teams while maintaining a customer‑centric focus.

Required skills

• Large language model development and fine‑tuning.
• Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), Direct Preference Optimization (DPO), Reinforcement Learning with Value Regularization (RLVR).
• Model distillation techniques.
• Design of agentic architectures for multi‑step reasoning and tool use.
• Evaluation framework creation and automated training pipeline engineering.

What we offer

• Opportunity to influence a world‑leading voice assistant used by millions.
• Support for publishing research and filing patents.
• Competitive compensation package with potential sign‑on payment.