Principal Applied Scientist, Real-Time Conversational AI , AGI

Principal Applied Scientist, Real-Time Conversational AI , AGI

Job :  |  Services LLC

We are looking for a Principal Applied Scientist to drive the research and development of real-time multimodal conversational AI. You will operate across two focus areas: advancing foundation models for speech and audio, and building the post-training systems (reward modeling, reinforcement learning) that shape natural, human-like conversational behavior.

You will be the expert in your area while contributing across the full model lifecycle — from pre-training and architecture design through post-training alignment and real-time deployment. You will work at the frontier of what's possible in conversational AI, with the compute, data, and runway to pursue problems that few teams in the world have the resources to tackle.

As a Principal Scientist, you will set the technical direction for your research area, influence the broader roadmap, and work closely with inference engineers to ensure your models are designed for real-time production deployment from inception.

• Build and train large-scale multimodal foundation models for real-time speech and audio generation, from architecture design through production-scale training
• Advance the scaling and efficiency of conversational modes, including the relationship between data, model size, and real time performance.
• Design model architectures informed by hardware constraints and inference requirements, working with inference engineers to ensure models are servable from inception
• Develop training methodologies for multimodal models that jointly process and generate speech, language, and audio in real-time streaming contexts

• Design and build reward models and reward functions for speech systems — capturing naturalness, fluency, conversational quality, and real-time responsiveness
• Develop and apply reinforcement learning methods to shape conversational behavior — teaching models natural timing, responsiveness, and fluid interaction
• Build the post-training pipeline from SFT through RL alignment, optimized for real-time multimodal outputs rather than text-only generation
• Design evaluation frameworks that capture the quality dimensions unique to real-time conversation

• Advance the team's capabilities in real-time perception
• Work at the intersection of model architecture and production constraints to ensure multimodal capabilities function within hard real-time latency budgets

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

Los Angeles County applicants:
Job duties for this position include: work safely and cooperatively with other employees, supervisors, and staff; adhere to standards of excellence despite stressful conditions; communicate effectively and respectfully with employees, supervisors, and staff to ensure exceptional customer service; and follow all federal, state, and local laws and Company policies. Criminal history may have a direct, adverse, and negative relationship with some of the material job duties of this position.

These include the duties and responsibilities listed above, as well as the abilities to adhere to company policies, exercise sound judgment, effectively manage stress and work safely and respectfully with others, exhibit trustworthiness and professionalism, and safeguard business operations and the Company’s reputation. Pursuant to the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

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The base salary range for…