Applied Scientist, Leo Security

Amazon is hiring an Applied Scientist, Leo Security in Arlington, United States. It pays $143k-$193k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Amazon.

Level's read on this job

On Level's scale, this applied scientist role is Builds AI ●●●●: the job is building AI systems.
Tools and skills the posting cites include PyTorch, TensorFlow and Statistical Models.
Level classifies it as a senior role.
Level lists 20,000+ other open roles at Amazon.

AI in this role

Develop behavioral and statistical models to secure low earth orbit satellite infrastructure against advanced security threats.

PyTorchTensorFlowStatistical ModelsBehavioral Models

applied-sciencemachine-learningprivacy-preserving-datathreat-detectiondata-science

Amazon Leo is a constellation of Low Earth Orbit satellites that will provide low-latency, high-speed broadband network connectivity to unserved and underserved communities around the world.

We are looking for an Applied Scientist to join the founding cohort of the Engineering and R\&D team within Leo Infrastructure and IP Security. The team defends the manufacturing lines, launch sites, and global ground infrastructure behind the constellation from the most sophisticated threat actors on the planet. The data is unlike anything you have worked with: badge and door-access events, asset movement, network telemetry, and industrial control signals from factories, ground stations, and launch facilities, all of which must be modeled, baselined, and defended. You will build the statistical and behavioral models that separate threat actor behavior from the noise of a global operation, and the privacy-preserving data representations that let detection science scale without exposing sensitive data. This is an R\&D role with a production mandate: every model you build becomes part of the system Leo's security teams use to protect the constellation.

#### Export Control Requirement

Due to applicable export control laws and regulations, candidates must be a U.S. citizen.

Key job responsibilities
- Build behavioral and statistical models that baseline normal activity across heterogeneous security telemetry, including specialized industrial-control and factory-floor data sources, so detections extend to new environments with low false-positive rates.
- Design privacy-preserving representations of sensitive security data, and verify that models and detections tuned against them remain accurate against the real data — turning data-protection guarantees into measurable, provable properties rather than assertions.
- Define the methodology and own the analysis for difficult, loosely defined problems: gather complex data across domains, select the right techniques from a range of data science methods, and justify your approach with evidence.
- Develop the metrics and evaluation frameworks that measure model and detection performance against threat actor behavior before a model is trusted in production.
- Contribute to the team's neurosymbolic reasoning platform, adapting state-of-the-art techniques from the literature and shipping components at production quality.
- Document your work with the rigor of a peer-reviewed publication, and communicate results clearly to both scientific and security-operations audiences.

A day in the life
You will move between analysis and production in the same week: profiling a telemetry source the team has never modeled, establishing what normal looks like for it, and shipping the baseline as a component detections build on. Security engineers on your team translate threat intelligence into the adversary behaviors that matter; you build and tune the models that detect those behaviors and evaluate model performance against them. You might spend a morning chasing a false-positive pattern to its statistical root cause, and the afternoon verifying that an anonymized dataset still preserves the signal a detection depends on. You will work semi-autonomously with guidance from senior scientists, backtest candidate detections against retained telemetry, and deliver scientific artifacts that ship.

About the team
Leo Infrastructure and IP Security protects the people, facilities, hardware, and supply chain behind a global satellite constellation. The Engineering and R\&D team within this organization builds the platforms and tooling the security pillar teams operate on, moving security operations from manual triage to correlation-based detection, automated response, and agentic AI. The team is composed of applied scientists, software engineers, and security engineers working across physical and digital security domains.

#### Inclusive Team Culture

In Amazon Security, it's in our nature to learn and be curious. Ongoing DEI events and learning experiences inspire us to continue learning and to embrace our uniqueness. Addressing the toughest security challenges requires that we seek out and celebrate a diversity of ideas, perspectives, and voices.

#### Training & 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, training, 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.

Basic qualifications

- 3+ years of building models for business application experience
- PhD, or Master's degree and 4+ years of CS, CE, ML or related field experience
- - Experience with statistical modeling and analysis of large, heterogeneous datasets, including anomaly detection, time-series analysis, or behavioral baselining
- - Fluency in Python; experience with a systems language such as Rust or C++ is a plus
- - Experience with popular deep learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow)

Preferred qualifications

- Experience in one or more of the following domains: access- control system and methodology, network security, application- and system-development security, security architecture and models, cryptography, and operations security
- Experience in professional software and systems development
- - Publications at top-tier peer-reviewed machine learning, data mining, or security venues (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, KDD, CCS, USENIX Security)
- - Experience with privacy-preserving machine learning, including synthetic data generation, anonymization, or differential privacy, and validating fidelity of transformed data
- - Experience designing evaluation frameworks and metrics for models where ground truth requires human judgment
- - Experience modeling operational or sensor telemetry, including industrial control systems (OT/SCADA), IoT, or physical-world event data

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

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.

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.

USA, VA, Arlington - 142,800.00 - 193,200.00 USD annually
USA, VA, Herndon - 142,800.00 - 193,200.00 USD annually
USA, WA, BELLEVUE - 142,800.00 - 193,200.00 USD annually
USA, WA, Seattle - 142,800.00 - 193,200.00 USD annually

How we rate this

Applied Scientist, Leo Security at Amazon rates 90 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.

●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.

Key facts

Applied Scientist, Leo Security is an open job at Amazon.
Level rates this role AI Level 4 of 4: Builds AI.
The listed salary is $143k-$193k a year.
The role is based in US, VA, Arlington.
The job was posted on August 14, 2026.
Seniority: senior.
Applications are handled by Amazon. Apply on Amazon

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

Applied ScienceMachine learningPrivacy Preserving DataThreat DetectionData SciencePyTorchTensorFlowStatistical Models

Also common in applied scientist jobs at this level

Java LLM Generative AI NLP Reinforcement learning Spark

Pay

This job starts at: $143k
Typical applied scientist job: $167k

This posting starts 15% below the typical applied scientist job. See applied scientist jobs

Questions you could be asked

Tell me about a project where applied science was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where machine learning was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where privacy preserving data was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where threat detection was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where data science was part of your work. What did you do?

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: Applied Science, Machine learning, Privacy Preserving Data, Threat Detection, and Data Science. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.

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