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Applied Scientist, Worldwide Returns & Recommerce - Science

Amazon

Bellevue, WAJob$143–193K/yrSeen 2mo agoSeen in employer's feed 5 days ago

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At a glance

Compensation
$143–193K/yr
Location
Bellevue, WA
Work Authorization
Not specified

Olive lists jobs from US employers, including remote roles you can work from the United States.

Job overview

The Applied Scientist will develop and evaluate models for natural language understanding and large language applications within Amazon’s Worldwide Returns & ReCommerce team. The team uses machine learning to improve customer returns, identify root causes, optimize reuse, and evaluate returned packages. The role applies modeling and analytical methods to business problems and works with data and software engineering teams to integrate models into large-scale production systems.

Skills & qualifications

RequiredNice to have

Skills

Natural Language UnderstandingLarge Language ModelsSQLPythonJupyter NotebookPyTorchMachine LearningAnalytical TechniquesStatistical MethodsJavaC++Unix/LinuxSoftware DevelopmentMentoring

Qualifications

3+ Years Model BuildingPhD or Master's With 4+ Years in CS, CE, ML or Related Field3+ Years Business Model ExperienceProfessional Software Development ExperienceTop-Tier Publications or Patents

Benefits

Medical Insurance
Parental Leave
Paid Time Off
401(k) Match

Full job description

Description

Welcome to the Worldwide Returns & ReCommerce team (WWR&R) at Amazon.com.

WWR&R is an agile, innovative organization dedicated to ‘making zero happen’ to benefit our customers, our company, and the environment. Our goal is to achieve the three zeroes: zero cost of returns, zero waste, and zero defects. We do this by developing groundbreaking products and driving truly innovative operational excellence to help customers keep what they buy, recover returned and damaged product value, keep thousands of tons of waste from landfills, and create the best customer returns experience in the world. We have an eye to the future – we create long-term value at Amazon by focusing not just on the bottom line, but on the planet. We are building the most sustainable re-use channel we can by driving multiple aspects of the Circular Economy for Amazon – Returns & ReCommerce.

Amazon WWR&R is comprised of business, product, operational, program, software engineering and data teams that manage the life of a returned or damaged product from a customer to the warehouse and on to its next best use. Our work is broad and deep: we train machine learning models to automate routing and find signals to optimize re-use; we invent new channels to give products a second life; we develop highly respected product support to help customers love what they buy; we pilot smarter product evaluations; we work from the customer backward to find ways to make the return experience remarkably delightful and easy; and we do it all while scrutinizing our business with laser focus.

You will help create everything from customer-facing and vendor-facing websites to the internal software and tools behind the reverse-logistics process. You can develop scalable, high-availability solutions to solve complex and broad business problems.

We are a group that has fun at work while driving incredible customer, business, and environmental impact. We are backed by a strong leadership group dedicated to operational excellence that empowers a reasonable work-life balance. As an established, experienced team, we offer the scope and support needed for substantial career growth.

Amazon is earth’s most customer-centric company and through WWR&R, the earth is our customer too. Come join us and innovate with the Amazon Worldwide Returns & ReCommerce team!

Key job responsibilities

  • Design, develop, and evaluate highly innovative models for our Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and Large Language Model (LLM) models

  • Use SQL to query and analyze the data.

  • Use Python, Jupyter notebook, and Pytorch to train/test/deploy NLU/LLM/GenAI models.

  • Use machine learning and analytical techniques to create scalable solutions for business problems.

  • Research and implement novel machine learning and statistical approaches.

  • Mentor interns.

  • Work closely with data & software engineering teams to build model implementations and integrate successful models and algorithms in production systems at very large scale.

A day in the life

If you are not sure that every qualification on the list above describes you exactly, we'd still love to hear from you! At Amazon, we value people with unique backgrounds, experiences, and skillsets. If you’re passionate about this role and want to make an impact on a global scale, please apply!

Benefits:

Amazon offers a full range of benefits that support you and eligible family members, including domestic partners and their children. Benefits can vary by location, the number of regularly scheduled hours you work, length of employment, and job status such as seasonal or temporary employment. The benefits that generally apply to regular, full-time employees include:

  1. Medical, Dental, and Vision Coverage

  2. Maternity and Parental Leave Options

  3. Paid Time Off (PTO)

  4. 401(k) Plan

Learn more about our benefits here: https://amazon.jobs/en/internal/benefits/us-benefits-and-stock

About the team

When a customer returns a package to Amazon, the request and package will be passed through our WWRR machine learning (ML) systems so that we could improve the customer experience, identify return root cause, optimize re-use, and evaluate the returned package. Our problems touch multiple modalities spanning from: textual, categorical, image, to speech data.

We operate at large scale and rely on state-of-the-art modeling techniques to power our ML models: XGBoost, BERT, Vision Transformers, Large Language Models.

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 programming in Java, C++, Python or related language

  • Experience building machine learning models or developing algorithms for business application

Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience using Unix/Linux

  • Experience in professional software development

  • Experience in patents or publications at top-tier peer-reviewed conferences or journals

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, WA, Bellevue - 142,800.00 - 193,200.00 USD annually

How this job compares

Set against the 1,075 open Applied Scientist jobs on Olive Jobs, counted November 4, 2026.

Pay
  • This posting$143–193K/yr
  • Washington median$143–226K/yr242 salary ranges
  • US median$158–264K/yr1,036 salary ranges

This range's midpoint, $168K, is 15% below the Washington median midpoint ($197K) — in the middle half of Applied Scientist salary ranges in Washington.

Openings
Olive Jobs lists 248 open Applied Scientist jobs in Washington and 1,075 across the US. Under 1% of them nationwide are listed as remote or flexible.
Hiring the most in Washington
Experience
This posting asks for at least 3 years of experience; Applied Scientist postings that state a minimum ask for 5 years at the median (918 postings).
Education
582 of the 1,075 open Applied Scientist jobs (54%) ask for a bachelor's degree or higher.

Counted across the open, public US postings on Olive Jobs on November 4, 2026. Pay medians are the middle values of the low ends and of the high ends of postings that list both ends of a range in the same cadence (a yearly salary or an hourly rate); a range's midpoint is halfway between its ends. Pay and experience figures resting on fewer than 20 postings are left out.

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