Principal, Applied Scientist, Just Walk Out

Amazon • Seattle, WA

12h

About The Position

We are looking for a Principal Applied Scientist to drive technical innovation in visual reasoning systems across multiple domains. You will be a technical leader who sets the research direction, architects novel solutions, and delivers breakthrough results that advance the state of the art while solving real-world business problems. You will be leading the efforts of building a next-generation visual reasoning engine powered by frontier Large Video Models (LVMs). Your mission is to build a system that rivals human understanding of the physical world — moving far beyond the static perception of detection and tracking into the realm of deep spatial-temporal reasoning. This is not a passive computer vision tool; it is an agentic collaborator capable of interpreting natural language instructions, navigating unstructured environments, and executing complex tasks. You will sit at the high-stakes intersection of LVMs, LLMs, and Agentic AI, engineering systems that don't just 'see' but reason and act within the physical world. You will own end-to-end technical solutions from research to production deployment, driving innovation through hands-on research, prototyping, and deployment while delivering production impact. About the team Just Walk Out (JWO) is a checkout-free shopping experience where customers simply enter the store, take what they want, and leave—no lines, no scanning, no checkout. Our Just Walk Out Technology automatically detects when products are taken from or returned to the shelves, keeps track of them in a virtual cart, and charges customers' accounts after they leave. Check it out at https://www.justwalkout.com/. Designed and custom-built by Amazonians, our Just Walk Out Technology uses cutting-edge visual reasoning systems powered by vision-language-reasoning models to understand complex shopping behaviors in real-time. Our algorithms process multi-camera video streams to track customers throughout their shopping journey and determine exactly what items customers take—all without requiring them to scan or checkout. Innovation is part of our DNA! We are now applying our visual reasoning expertise to solve critical challenges in new domains beyond retail. We need people who want to join an ambitious program to expand beyond retail, building state-of-the-art visual reasoning systems that work across domains in physical AI. This expansion represents a significant opportunity to apply cutting-edge vision-language models, multi-modal AI, and generative AI technologies to enterprise applications with massive business impact, enabling automated decision-making capabilities.

Requirements

• PhD in computer science, machine learning, engineering, or related fields
• 8+ years of applied research experience
• Strong publication record in top-tier conferences/journals (CVPR, NeurIPS, ICML, ICCV, ECCV, etc.)
• Deep expertise in architecting and training frontier Vision-Language Models (VLMs) or Large Video Models (LVMs), with proven ability to design novel algorithms that advance the state of the art in spatiotemporal understanding
• Experience translating research into production systems at scale
• Excellent programming skills in Python and deep learning frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow)
• Deep expertise in World Models, Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs/Gaussian Splatting), and long-horizon spatiotemporal reasoning
• Demonstrated leadership in building and scaling agentic AI applications in production
• A history of building and scaling world-class teams and mentoring senior ICs to achieve career breakthroughs

Responsibilities

• Direct the technical vision for next-gen visual reasoning, pioneering the use of LVMs to solve high-dimensional spatial-temporal problems
• Designing and implementing novel algorithms that push the boundaries of what's possible with generative AI
• Architecting scalable solutions that deliver real-time insights across diverse environments
• Building agentic AI systems that autonomously execute end-to-end workflows, transforming visual data into actionable business intelligence
• Leading cross-functional collaboration to translate research breakthroughs into production systems
• Publishing research at top-tier conferences (CVPR, NeurIPS, ICML) and establishing technical thought leadership in visual reasoning and multi-modal AI
• Mentoring scientists and engineers to elevate technical excellence across the organization
• Influencing product roadmaps through deep technical expertise and business acumen

Benefits

• 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
• parental leave

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree