Sr. Applied Science Manager, Agentic AI Ads, Sponsored Products and Brands

Sponsored Products and Brands (SPB) is at the heart of Amazon Advertising, helping millions of advertisers—from small businesses to global brands—connect with customers at the moments that matter most. Our advertising solutions enable sellers, vendors, and brand owners to grow their businesses by reaching shoppers with relevant, engaging ads across Amazon's store and beyond. We're obsessed with delivering measurable results for advertisers while creating a delightful shopping experience for customers.

Are you interested in defining the science behind the future of advertising? Sponsored Products and Brands science teams are pioneering breakthrough agentic AI systems—pushing the boundaries of large language models, autonomous reasoning, planning, and decision-making to build intelligent agents that fundamentally transform how advertisers succeed on Amazon.

As an SPB applied science leader, you'll have end-to-end ownership of the product and scientific vision, research agenda, model architectures, and evaluation frameworks required to deliver state-of-the-art agentic AI solutions for our advertising customers. You'll get to work on problems that are fast-paced, scientifically rich, and deeply consequential. You'll also be able to explore novel research directions, take bold bets, and collaborate with remarkable scientists, engineers, and product leaders. We'll look for you to bring your diverse perspectives, deep technical expertise, and scientific rigor to make Amazon Advertising even better for our advertisers and customers. With global opportunities for talented scientists and science leaders, you can decide where a career in Amazon Ads Science takes you!

We are kicking off a new initiative within SPB to leverage agentic AI solutions to revolutionize how advertisers create, manage, and optimize their advertising campaigns. This is a unique opportunity to lead a business-critical applied science initiative from its inception—defining the scientific charter, establishing foundational research pillars, and building a multi-year science roadmap for transformative impact. As the single-threaded applied science leader, you will build and guide a dedicated team of applied scientists, research scientists, and machine learning engineers, working closely with cross-functional engineering and product partners, to research, develop, and deploy agentic AI systems that fundamentally reimagine the advertiser journey.

Your charter will begin with advancing the science behind intelligent agents that simplify campaign creation, automate optimization decisions through autonomous reasoning and planning, and deliver personalized advertising strategies at scale. You will pioneer novel approaches in areas such as LLM-based agent architectures, multi-step planning and tool use, retrieval-augmented generation, reinforcement learning from human and business feedback, and robust evaluation methodologies for agentic systems. You will expand to proactively identify and tackle the next generation of AI-powered advertising experiences across the entire SPB portfolio. This high-visibility role places you as the science leader driving our strategy to democratize advertising success—making it effortless for advertisers of all sizes to achieve their business goals while delivering relevant experiences for Amazon customers.

Key job responsibilities
Build, mentor, and lead a new, high-performing applied science organization of applied scientists, research scientists, and engineers, fostering a culture of scientific excellence, innovation, customer obsession, and ownership.

Define, own, and drive the long-term scientific and product vision and research strategy for agentic AI-powered advertising experiences across Sponsored Products and Brands—identifying the highest-impact research problems and charting a path from exploration to production.

Lead the research, design, and development of novel agentic AI models and systems—including LLM-based agent architectures, multi-agent orchestration, planning and reasoning frameworks, tool-use mechanisms, and retrieval-augmented generation pipelines—that deliver measurable value for advertisers and create delightful, intuitive experiences.

Establish rigorous scientific methodology and evaluation frameworks for assessing agent performance, reliability, safety, and advertiser outcomes, setting a high bar for experimentation, reproducibility, and offline-to-online consistency.

Partner closely with senior business, engineering, and product leaders across Amazon Advertising to translate advertiser pain points and business opportunities into well-defined science problems, and deliver cohesive, production-ready solutions that drive advertiser success.

Drive execution from research to production at scale, ensuring models and agentic systems meet high standards for quality, robustness, latency, safety, and reliability for mission-critical advertising services operating at Amazon scale.

Champion a culture of scientific inquiry and technical depth that encourages bold experimentation, publication of novel research, relentless simplification, and continuous improvement.

Communicate your team's scientific vision, research breakthroughs, strategy, and progress to senior leadership and key stakeholders, ensuring alignment with broader Amazon Advertising objectives and contributing to Amazon's position at the forefront of applied AI.

Develop a science roadmap directly tied to advertiser outcomes, revenue growth, and business plans, delivering on commitments for high-impact research and modeling initiatives that shape the future of AI-powered digital advertising.

Basic Qualifications

Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Statistics, or a related quantitative field, or equivalent combination of M.S. and relevant experience.

10+ years experience in applied science, machine learning, GenAI/LLMs or AI research, with a strong track record of developing and deploying models and systems into production at scale.

5+ years experience managing and growing applied science or machine learning teams, including hiring, mentoring, and developing senior scientific talent.

Deep hands-on expertise in one or more of the following: large language models (LLMs), natural language processing, deep learning, reinforcement learning, or multi-agent systems.

Experience partnering with engineering, product, and program management teams to translate scientific research into customer-facing products and measurable business outcomes.

Proficiency in modern ML frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX) and programming languages commonly used in ML research and production (e.g., Python, Scala, Java).

Preferred Qualifications

Direct experience building or leading research and development of agentic AI systems, including LLM-based autonomous agents, multi-step planning and reasoning, tool use, and multi-agent orchestration.

Experience with large-scale LLM fine-tuning, prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), and alignment techniques.

8+ years experience managing and growing applied science or machine learning teams, including hiring, mentoring, and developing senior scientific talent.

Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status, disability, or other legally protected status.

Los Angeles County applicants: Job duties for this position include: work safely and cooperatively with other employees, supervisors, and staff; adhere to standards of excellence despite stressful conditions; communicate effectively and respectfully with employees, supervisors, and staff to ensure exceptional customer service; and follow all federal, state, and local laws and Company policies. Criminal history may have a direct, adverse, and negative relationship with some of the material job duties of this position. These include the duties and responsibilities listed above, as well as the abilities to adhere to company policies, exercise sound judgment, effectively manage stress and work safely and respectfully with others, exhibit trustworthiness and professionalism, and safeguard business operations and the Company’s reputation. Pursuant to the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

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The base salary range for this position is listed below. Your Amazon package will include sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs). Final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience, qualifications, and location. Amazon also offers comprehensive benefits including health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans, EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line, Flexible Spending Accounts, Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage), 401(k) matching, paid time off, and parental leave. Learn more about our benefits at https://amazon.jobs/en/benefits.