Principal Applied Scientist, Alexa Sensitive

Master’s degree in Computer Science (Machine Learning, AI, Statistics, Mathematics, or equivalent)
- Experience programming in Java, C++, Python or related language
- Experience distilling informal customer requirements into problem definitions, dealing with ambiguity and competing objectives

Alexa is the voice activated digital assistant powering devices like Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Show, and Fire TV, which are at the forefront of this latest technology wave. To preserve our customers’ experience and trust, the Alexa Sensitive Content Intelligence (ASCI) team builds services and tools through Machine Learning techniques to implement our policies to detect and mitigate sensitive content in across Alexa.

We are looking for an experienced Principal Applied Science to build industry-leading technologies in attribute extraction, annotation, sensitive content detection and interpretation across all languages, modal, and countries.

The Principal Applied Scientist will be a tech lead for a team of exceptional scientists to develop novel algorithms and modeling techniques to advance the state of the art in NLP and Computer Vision related tasks. You will work in a hybrid, fast-paced organization where scientists, engineers, and product managers work together to build customer facing experiences. You will collaborate with and mentor other scientists to raise the bar of scientific research in Amazon.

Key job responsibilities

In addition to technical depth, they must possess exceptional communication skills and understand how to influence key stakeholders. The work will directly impact our customers in the form of products and services that make use of speech, language, and computer vision technologies.

The Principal Applied Scientist will be joining a group producing one of the most highly rated products in Amazon's history, so if you are looking for a challenging and innovative role where you can solve important problems while growing as a leader, this may be the place for you.

A day in the life
You will be working with a group of talented scientists on researching algorithms and running experiments to test scientific proposals / solutions to improve our sensitive content detection and mitigation worldwide. This will involve collaboration with partner teams including engineering, PMs, data annotators, and other scientists to discuss data quality, policy, model development, and solution implementation. You will mentor other scientists, review and guide their work, help develop roadmaps for the team. You work closely with partner teams across Alexa to deliver platform features that require cross-team leadership.

About the team
Alexa Sensitive Content Intelligence (ASCI) team's mission is to (1) minimize negative surprises to customers caused by sensitive content, (2) detect and prevent potential brand-damaging interactions, and (3) build customer trust through appropriate interactions on sensitive topics.

The term “sensitive content” includes categories content such as offensive content (e.g. hate speech, racist speech), profanity, content that is suitable only for certain age groups, politically polarizing content, and religiously polarizing content. The term “content” refers to any material that is exposed to customers by Alexa (including both 1P and 3P experiences) and includes text, speech, audio, and video.

Bangalore, KA, IND
- PhD in Computer Science (Machine Learning, AI, Statistics, Mathematics, or equivalent)
- Extensive knowledge and practical experience in some of the following areas: machine learning, statistics, deep learning, NLP (Natural Language Processing), recommendation systems, dialogue systems or information retrieval; Computer Vision
- Peer reviewed scientific contributions in premier journals and conferences
- Experience with defining research and development practices in an applied environment
- Track record in technically leading, mentoring scientists
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills. Able to explain complex solutions in easy-to-understand terms.