Description

　　Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a service that enables third-party sellers to outsource fulfillment to Amazon, and use Amazon’s world-class science and logistics infrastructure to fulfill customers world-wide with fast delivery promise. FBA team is looking for an experienced and creative Principal Research Scientist with strong modeling and analytical skills to join our cross-domain group of data scientists, applied scientists, research scientists, and economists. This is a high-impact role with opportunities to develop systems and analyze initiatives that contribute billions of dollars to the business. As a lead research scientist in the team, you will be responsible for designing and implementing cutting edge optimization models, building automated inventory and logistic management systems while collaborating with business and software teams to solve key challenges facing the worldwide FBA business. Such challenges include 1) designing inventory, inbound, capacity, revenue, and workforce management systems for new FBA business initiatives, 2) developing, improving, and maintaining optimization models to help FBA sellers grow their business, 3) ensuring worldwide Amazon customers have access to the largest selection of products through FBA sellers, as well as 4) driving out costs across end-to-end FBA supply chain. Unlike many companies who buy existing off-the-shelf planning systems, we are responsible for studying, designing, and building systems to suit Amazon’s particular needs. Our team members have an opportunity to be on the forefront of supply chain thought leadership by working on some of the most difficult problems in the industry with some of the best product managers, research scientists, statisticians, economists and software developers in the business.

　　The successful candidate will have a strong quantitative background and can thrive in an environment that leverages operations research, statistics, machine learning, econometrics, and data analytics. Solid research experience in Operations Research, or a related field, such as statistics or machine learning, is required. We are seeking someone who can thrive in a fast-paced, high-energy and fun work environment where the team delivers value incrementally and frequently. We value highly technical people who know their subject matter deeply and are willing to learn new areas. We look for individuals who know how to deliver results and show a desire to develop themselves, their colleagues, and their careers.

　　A day in the life

　　In this role, you will be a technical leader in Operations Research with significant scope, impact, and high visibility. Your solutions will lead to billions of dollars of impact on either the topline or the bottom line of Amazon’s business. You will work closely with Product Managers, Software Engineers, and other Scientists, to deeply understand FBA Seller business problems and priorities. You will design and launch new systems. You will solve real world pricing, inventory, transportation, and location problems with millions of unique products involving hundreds of thousands of Selling Partners and tens of millions of customers around the world. Throughout the process, you will be supported by a team of research and data scientists, as well as product managers, and software engineers. You will also collaborate with the broader decision and research science community in Amazon to expand the horizon of your work and mentor engineers and scientists. You will be entrepreneurial, wear many hats, and work in a fast-paced, high-energy, highly collaborative environment.

　　About the team

　　Sellers are a critical part of Amazon’s ecosystem to deliver on our vision of offering the Earth’s largest selection and lowest prices. Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a service that allows sellers to outsource order fulfillment to Amazon, allowing sellers to leverage Amazon’s world-class facilities to provide customers Prime delivery promise. Sellers gain access to Prime members worldwide, see their sales lift, and are free to focus their time and resources on what they do best while Amazon manages fulfillment. Over the last several years, Sellers enjoyed strong growth using FBA, shipping more than half of all products offered on Amazon. To our consumers, FBA provides a broad and diverse inventory of products from Books, Electronics and Apparel to Consumables and beyond with many of them available with 1-Day shipping. The FBA team is the core group in charge of fulfillment, inventory, pricing, and a wide array of operational recommendation services to our Sellers as well as building the internal resource management systems. FBA sellers leverage Amazon’s expertise in optimization, data analytics, econometrics, machine learning, and market design to deliver the best pricing, inventory, fulfilment management experience to sellers. We work full-stack, from foundational backend systems to future-forward user interfaces. Our culture is centered on rapid prototyping, rigorous experimentation, and data-driven decision-making.

　　“Third-party sellers are kicking our first party butt. Badly. And it’s a high bar too because our first-party business has grown dramatically over that period, from $1.6 billion in 1999 to $117 billion this past year. The compound annual growth rate for our first-party business in that time period is 25%. But in that same time, third-party sales have grown from $0.1 billion to $160 billion – a compound annual growth rate of 52%. To provide an external benchmark, eBay’s gross merchandise sales in that period have grown at a compound rate of 20%, from $2.8 billion to $95 billion. Why did independent sellers do so much better selling on Amazon than they did on eBay? And why were independent sellers able to grow so much faster than Amazon’s own highly organized first-party sales organization? There isn’t one answer, but we do know one extremely important part of the answer: We helped independent sellers compete against our first-party business by investing in and offering them the very best selling tools we could imagine and build. There are many such tools, including tools that help sellers manage inventory, process payments, track shipments, create reports, and sell across borders – and we’re inventing more every year. But of great importance are Fulfillment by Amazon and the Prime membership program. In combination, these two programs meaningfully improved the customer experience of buying from independent sellers.” —Jeff Bezos, 2018 Letter to Shareholders

　　We are open to hiring candidates to work out of one of the following locations:

　　Bellevue, WA, USA

　　Basic Qualifications

　　•Ph.D. in Operations Research, Operations Management, Industrial Engineering, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, Computer Science or a related field.

　　•7+ years of experience in solving complex problems in the area of operations research and developing strategies for large-scale supply chain, transportation and logistic networks.

　　•Perform quantitative, economic, and numerical analysis of the performance of large-scale systems under uncertainty using statistical and optimization tools such as Python, R and XPRESS to determine optimal and heuristic solution strategies for optimization problems.

　　•Apply theories of mathematical optimization, including linear programming, combinatorial optimization, integer programming, dynamic programming, network flows and algorithms to design optimal or near optimal solution methodologies to be used by in-house decision support tools and software.

　　•Proficiency working with Python, SQL and/or C/C++.

　　•Excellent written and verbal communication skills while addressing both technical and business people; ability to speak at a level appropriate for the audience. The ideal candidate should be able to present business cases, and document models, analyses, and results to influence important decisions

　　Preferred Qualifications

　　•10+ years of hands-on experience applying theoretical models in an applied environment.

　　•Experience in supply chains, transportation and logistics, and network optimization models.

　　•Significant peer-reviewed scientific contributions in premier journals and conferences.

　　•Programming experience using at least one modern programming language such as Python, Java, or C+•Proficiency in model development, model validation and model implementation for large-scale applications

　　•Superior verbal and written communication and presentation skills, ability to convey rigorous mathematical concepts and considerations to non-experts.

　　•Proven ability to work effectively in a cross-functional team.

　　Amazon is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or other legally protected status. For individuals with disabilities who would like to request an accommodation, please visit https://www.amazon.jobs/en/disability/us.

　　Our compensation reflects the cost of labor across several US geographic markets. The base pay for this position ranges from $151,500/year in our lowest geographic market up to $294,700/year in our highest geographic market. Pay is based on a number of factors including market location and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Amazon is a total compensation company. Dependent on the position offered, equity, sign-on payments, and other forms of compensation may be provided as part of a total compensation package, in addition to a full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits. For more information, please visit https://www.aboutamazon.com/workplace/employee-benefits. Applicants should apply via our internal or external career site.