Sr. Applied Scientist, Amazon Books

ID: 7182

Type: Full-time

Category: Others

Company Name: Amazon Spain Services, S.L.U.

Location: ESP, M, Madrid - Madrid - Spain

Visit company vacancy

Job Description

Amazon is looking for creative Applied Scientists to tackle some of the most interesting problems in Artificial Intelligence (AI), natural language processing (NLP), knowledge graph curation, search, recommendation and related areas with our Amazon Books team. At Amazon Books we believe that reading is essential for a healthy society. As such, we aim to inspire readers by making it easy to read more and get more out of reading. We do this by creating an unmatched book discovery experience for our customers worldwide. We enable customers to discover new books, authors and genres through smart search tools, intelligent interactions and sophisticated recommendations, and we need your help to keep innovating in this space.

If you are looking for an opportunity to solve deep technical problems and build innovative solutions in a fast-paced environment working within a smart and passionate team, this might be the role for you. You will develop and implement novel algorithms, agentic systems and modeling techniques to advance the state-of-the-art in technology areas at the intersection of AI, LLMs, NLP, search, and deep learning. You will innovate at scale, help move the needle for research in these exciting areas and build state-of-the-art technologies that enable delightful experiences for hundreds of millions of people.

Key job responsibilities
In this role you will:
- Work collaboratively with other scientists and developers to design and implement scalable and reliable pipelines for ensuring our vast knowledge base of books meets the highest levels of accuracy and is aligned with how customers think about books;
- set the scientific roadmap needed to sustain state-of-the-art quality and efficiency. Stay up-to-date with the latest technologies and adopt the most appropriate long-term solution to a variety of use cases.
- set the standard for science rigor and quality, deal with ambiguity and competing objectives, and mentor other members to achieve their career growth potential.
- Drive scalable solutions: from understanding the customer and business needs, to prototyping, production testing and through engineering directly to production.

A day in the life
Day-to-day work varies, but on a typical day you will:
- run (or supervise) experiments. Depending on the stage or project, this may involve designing the experiments, collecting data, training models, prompt/spec engineering/optimization, error analysis, online system analysis, etc.
- drive decisions by interpreting and communicating experimental results with stakeholders (managers, subject matter experts, other scientists, and engineers) and seeking/listening to their feedback.
- strategic thinking: review results, identify trends and what step-changes are needed.

You'll contribute to regular meetings, activities and conferences with the wider science team, organization as well as internal and external communities.

About the team
The team consists of a collaborative group of scientists, product leaders, and dedicated engineering teams. Our aim is to maintain the world’s most accurate and descriptive set of books metadata, where every title in our catalog is uniquely characterized via a set of high-quality, concise attributes. We believe this is a foundational capacity for any bookstore. We work with sister teams to leverage our systems to drive a diverse array of customer experiences, owned both by ourselves and others, that enable customers to easily identify their ideal next read.

Basic Qualifications

- PhD, or a Master's degree and experience in CS, CE, ML or related field
- Experience programming in Java, C++, Python or related language
- Experience in building models for business application
- Experience in investigating, designing, prototyping, and delivering new and innovative system solutions
- Experience communicating clearly and concisely with leadership, stakeholders, and cross-functional teams
- Experience working in a fast paced, quickly changing or international environment
- Experience owning end-to-end programs to drive results

Preferred Qualifications

- PhD
- Have publications at top-tier peer-reviewed conferences or journals
- Experience in professional software development
- Experience building complex software systems that have been successfully delivered to customers, or experience in machine learning, data mining, information retrieval, statistics or natural language processing
- Experience with in one or more of: Generative AI, LLM-as-judge, Knowledge Graphs, prompt optimization, agentic workflows, LLM interpretability.

Amazon is an equal opportunities employer. We believe passionately that employing a diverse workforce is central to our success. We make recruiting decisions based on your experience and skills. We value your passion to discover, invent, simplify and build. Protecting your privacy and the security of your data is a longstanding top priority for Amazon. Please consult our Privacy Notice (https://www.amazon.jobs/en/privacy_page) to know more about how we collect, use and transfer the personal data of our candidates.

Our inclusive culture empowers Amazonians to deliver the best results for our customers. If you have a disability and need a workplace accommodation or adjustment during the application and hiring process, including support for the interview or onboarding process, please visit https://amazon.jobs/content/en/how-we-hire/accommodations for more information. If the country/region you’re applying in isn’t listed, please contact your Recruiting Partner.

Company Information

Company Name: Amazon Spain Services, S.L.U.

Company Website: https://www.amazon.es

Company Address: ESP, M, Madrid

Amazon Spain Services, S.L.U. is a Spain‑based legal entity within the global Amazon group that operates to support and enable Amazon’s commercial, operational and customer-facing activities in the Spanish market. As a locally incorporated company, it functions as an operational and administrative arm that helps deliver Amazon’s core e-commerce capabilities to Spanish consumers, third‑party sellers and business partners. Its activities are focused on enabling online retail, facilitating marketplace interactions, coordinating logistics and fulfillment functions in collaboration with other Amazon entities, and delivering customer service and seller support tailored to Spain. The company’s role is primarily commercial and operational rather than as a standalone consumer brand: it acts within Amazon’s broader European and global corporate structure to implement Amazon’s products and services for customers, sellers and partners in Spain. Core business activities carried out by Amazon Spain Services, S.L.U. typically include managing and operating Amazon’s online retail storefront for Spain, supporting and administering the Amazon Marketplace that connects independent third‑party sellers with Spanish customers, providing business and operational support for logistics and fulfillment efforts, and delivering customer service and post‑sales support in local languages. In practice, these responsibilities can encompass product listings and catalog management for Amazon.es, integration and onboarding services for marketplace sellers, administration of seller programs and tools, localized marketing and promotions, operation of customer service channels (including phone, chat and email support), and coordination with fulfillment centers to support order processing, returns and delivery tracking for Spanish customers. The company’s main products and services are therefore best understood as Amazon’s consumer and business offerings localized for Spain: (1) the Amazon.es online retail platform that offers millions of consumer goods across categories including electronics, books, household items, fashion, and groceries; (2) the Amazon Marketplace, a platform service that enables independent sellers to list and sell products to Spanish customers, along with related seller‑facing tools such as order management, inventory tools, advertising services, and analytics; (3) logistics and fulfillment support tied to Amazon’s network of fulfillment centers and delivery partners, which facilitate warehousing, pick‑and‑pack, shipping and returns operations; (4) customer service and post‑purchase support tailored for Spanish customers, including help with orders, refunds, and account issues; and (5) localized versions of broader Amazon services such as Prime membership benefits in Spain (fast and free delivery options, Prime Video access where applicable, and other Prime promotions) and advertising solutions for merchants seeking to reach Spanish shoppers. Although Amazon Spain Services, S.L.U. primarily supports e-commerce activity, its operations intersect with wider Amazon technologies and programs. These interactions commonly involve marketplace platform technology, data and analytics systems that power search and recommendations, payments facilitation, anti‑fraud and trust & safety services, and integrations with logistics and delivery technologies. The company therefore participates in delivering a combination of offline operational services and online technology‑enabled services to ensure a cohesive, end‑to‑end shopping experience for consumers and an effective selling environment for businesses in Spain. From a stakeholder perspective, Amazon Spain Services, S.L.U. serves several groups: consumers who purchase goods through Amazon.es, independent sellers and brands that use the Amazon Marketplace to access Spanish customers, logistics and delivery partners that collaborate to fulfill orders, and internal Amazon business units that rely on the Spanish entity to implement localized programs, regulatory compliance, and commercial strategies. Its activities also interact with public authorities and regulatory frameworks in Spain, where the company must comply with local laws governing commerce, taxation, consumer protection, data protection and employment. In practical terms, Amazon Spain Services, S.L.U. contributes to the Amazon value chain by localizing Amazon’s global propositions and ensuring they operate effectively in Spain’s market context. That includes adapting product assortments and promotions to local preferences, providing customer service in Spanish and other local languages, administering seller programs that comply with Spanish rules, and coordinating with fulfillment networks to meet delivery expectations. The company typically works alongside other Amazon group entities (for example, European regional headquarters, fulfillment and logistics subsidiaries, and technology teams) to deliver the integrated services that consumers and sellers expect from Amazon. Amazon Spain Services, S.L.U.’s presence in Spain is indicative of Amazon’s strategy to maintain local legal entities in core markets to handle commercial operations, regulatory compliance and customer engagement at a country level while leveraging global technology, logistics and brand infrastructure. As part of Amazon’s overall operations in Europe, the Spanish entity helps sustain a large, multi‑category online marketplace and supports the operational back‑end required to serve millions of customers and thousands of businesses across Spain.

Visit company vacancy