Senior Applied Scientist, Robotics - Vulcan

Senior Applied Scientist, Amazon Robotics – Vulcan

Job :  |  Services LLC

Our team in Amazon Robotics builds robotic systems that perform contact-rich manipulation tasks safely and reliably in complex, unstructured environments — at Amazon scale. Our scientists and engineers push the boundaries of robotic manipulation to handle enormous object diversity, bringing deep expertise across planning, control, perception, and machine learning. We learn from real-world data at a scale that few teams in robotics can access.

We are seeking an experienced Senior Applied Scientist to join our Motion Behaviors team. You will drive the development of learned controllers and manipulation behaviors, applying techniques like reinforcement learning and behavior cloning to robots operating in Amazon fulfillment centers. These problems remain unsolved at scale: our robots must improve continuously in environments where simulation alone is insufficient. You will make principled decisions about when learned approaches should replace engineered solutions, and how to select behaviors based on estimated risk.

You will collaborate across disciplines and leverage rich operational data to continuously improve system performance.

• Drive the development of learned controllers and manipulation behaviors, from research prototyping through deployment on production robots.
• Research, design, and implement motion planning, control, and decision-making algorithms that improve the performance of deployed systems.
• Design and deploy learning pipelines that take policies from simulation training to reliable, real-time execution on physical robots.
• Develop models that predict manipulation outcomes and inform behavior selection under uncertainty.
• Own the development of scalable, real-time implementations — writing production-quality code and setting engineering standards for the team.
• Leverage operational data from deployed systems to systematically identify failure modes and drive policy improvements.
• Mentor junior scientists and engineers, raising the bar for applied science rigor and engineering quality.
• Represent Amazon in academia through publications and scientific presentations.

• PhD, or Master’s degree and 6+ years of applied research experience.
• Experience programming in Java, C++, Python or related language.
• 4+ years of robotics work cells and control systems experience.
• 3+ years of building and deploying machine learning models for robotics applications.
• Track record of training reinforcement learning or imitation learning policies in simulation and successfully transferring them to physical robotic systems.

• Experience with sim-to-real transfer at scale (domain randomization, system identification, etc.).
• Experience deploying learned policies in production environments with uptime and reliability requirements.
• Experience designing reward functions and training curricula for reinforcement learning on robotic systems.
• Publications in top robotics or machine learning venues (RSS, CoRL, ICRA, NeurIPS, ICML, etc.).

• Medical, Dental, and Vision Coverage.
• Maternity and Parental Leave Options.
• Paid Time Off (PTO).
• 401(k) Plan.

Amazon also offers additional benefits including health insurance, 401(k) matching, paid time off, and parental leave. The base salary range for this position is $ – $ USD annually.

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

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 contact your Recruiting Partner.

Location:

Seattle, WA, USA