Senior Applied Scientist, PV Ads Science

Amazon is hiring a Senior Applied Scientist, PV Ads Science in Seattle, United States. It pays $184k-$249k 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.
Pay on this posting starts 7% higher than the typical applied scientist posting on Level.
The posting mentions applied science, machine learning and personalization among its tools and skills.
Amazon has 21,000+ other open roles on Level.
Posted in the last few days.

AI in this role

Lead machine learning and applied science initiatives to optimize video advertising models and personalization.

applied-sciencemachine-learningpersonalizationexperimentationadvertising-science

Prime Video is a first-stop entertainment destination offering customers a vast collection of premium programming in one app available across thousands of devices. Prime members can customize their viewing experience and find their favorite movies, series, documentaries, and live sports – including Amazon MGM Studios-produced series and movies; licensed fan favorites; and programming from Prime Video subscriptions such as Apple TV+, HBO Max, Peacock, Crunchyroll and MGM+. All customers, regardless of whether they have a Prime membership or not, can rent or buy titles via the Prime Video Store, and can enjoy even more content for free with ads.

Are you interested in shaping the future of entertainment? Prime Video's technology teams are creating best-in-class digital video experience.

As a Prime Video team member, you’ll have end-to-end ownership of the product, user experience, design, and technology required to deliver state-of-the-art experiences for our customers. You’ll get to work on projects that are fast-paced, challenging, and varied. You’ll also be able to experiment with new possibilities, take risks, and collaborate with remarkable people.

We’ll look for you to bring your diverse perspectives, ideas, and skill-sets to make Prime Video even better for our customers. With global opportunities for talented technologists, you can decide where a career Prime Video Tech takes you!

Key job responsibilities
The science challenges include:
- Heterogeneous customer responses. The same customer responds differently to ads depending on what they’re watching, how engaged they are, and their broader streaming context. We need to understand and predict this variation to make better advertising decisions in real time.
- Signal sparsity in streaming. Unlike search or retail advertising, streaming offers no clicks, no conversions, and limited direct feedback. We must develop creative approaches to infer customer preferences, intent, and tolerance from indirect behavioral signals.
- Personalization at scale. A one-size-fits-all ad experience leaves value on the table for both customers and the business. We build systems that adapt ad load, placement, and content to individual viewers across 100M+ customers and 100k+ titles.
- Small effects, large variance. Ad interventions typically produce 0.1-2% shifts in engagement, effects easily overwhelmed by natural behavioral variance. Measuring, attributing, and optimizing these small signals requires rigorous experimental design and causal methodologies.
- Competing objectives. Revenue, customer engagement, long-term retention, and advertiser value are in tension. We develop principled frameworks to navigate these tradeoffs and optimize for sustainable outcomes rather than any single metric.

A day in the life
- Lead the research and development of ML models that personalize advertising decisions for 100M+ customers across 100k+ titles, with production deployment in mind
- Develop deep learning architectures (multi-task learning, embedding-based representations) for customer behavior prediction at scale
- Design and analyze large-scale A/B experiments, applying causal inference techniques to measure and optimize the impact of ad strategies on customer engagement and monetization
- Partner with engineering to ensure models meet production latency and scalability requirements
- Collaborate with product managers to frame business problems as tractable ML problems and translate findings into product decisions
- Shape the team’s scientific roadmap, identifying high-impact research directions

About the team
Prime Video Ads is pioneering the use of Generative AI, Deep Learning and Causal ML to empower the next generation of Ads experience in Prime Video. Our vision is to build the world’s most valuable and differentiated ad-supported streaming platform: one where every ad is relevant to the viewer, and every dollar spent by an advertiser delivers measurable results. We are seeking lead applied scientists who have demonstrated experience in advancing state of the art ML algorithms, particularly in Personalization, Relevance, Casual Inference and Gen-AI areas. Your role will be to deliver these innovations as production-ready systems at Amazon scale.

Basic qualifications

- 5+ years of building machine learning models for business application experience
- PhD, or Master's degree and 6+ years of applied research experience
- Experience programming in Java, C++, Python or related language

Preferred qualifications

- Experience with large scale machine learning systems such as profiling and debugging and understanding of system performance and scalability

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, NY, New York - 183,800.00 - 248,700.00 USD annually
USA, VA, Arlington - 167,100.00 - 226,100.00 USD annually
USA, WA, SEATTLE - 167,100.00 - 226,100.00 USD annually

How we rate this

Senior Applied Scientist, PV Ads Science 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

Senior Applied Scientist, PV Ads Science is an open job at Amazon.
Level rates this role AI Level 4 of 4: Builds AI.
The listed salary is $184k-$249k a year.
The role is based in US, WA, Seattle.
The job was posted on October 26, 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 learningPersonalizationExperimentationAdvertising Science

Also common in applied scientist jobs at this level

LLM NLP TensorFlow Spark Reinforcement learning Computer vision

Pay

This job starts at: $184k
Typical applied scientist job: $172k

This posting starts 7% above 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 personalization was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where experimentation was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where advertising science was part of your work. What did you do?

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: Applied Science, Machine learning, Personalization, Experimentation, and Advertising 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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