Sr Manager, Applied Science, Alexa for Shopping (Rufus)

Amazon • Palo Alto, CA

1d • $218,800 - $340,300 • Onsite

About The Position

Alexa for Shopping (previously Rufus) is seeking a Senior Manager, Applied Science to lead multidisciplinary teams of Applied Scientists and Machine Learning Engineers building next-generation conversational AI and multi-agent systems powering customer-facing experiences at scale. This leader will drive both scientific innovation and execution across large language models (LLMs), agent orchestration, retrieval and grounding systems, evaluation frameworks, and scalable AI infrastructure. The role requires a combination of deep technical judgment, organizational leadership, product and engineering partnership, and operational excellence. The ideal candidate has a strong track record of building high-performing science and engineering teams, translating ambiguous business problems into scalable AI solutions, and delivering measurable customer impact through applied machine learning and generative AI technologies.

Requirements

• 10+ years of building large-scale machine learning and AI solutions at Internet scale experience
• Master's degree in Computer Science (Machine Learning, AI, Statistics, or equivalent)
• Experience building large-scale machine learning and AI solutions at Internet scale
• Experience distilling informal customer requirements into problem definitions, dealing with ambiguity and competing objectives
• Experience hiring and leading experienced scientists as well as having a successful record of developing junior members from academia or industry to a successful career track

Nice To Haves

• 10+ years of practical work applying ML to solve complex problems for large-scale applications experience
• 5+ years of hands-on work in big data, machine learning and predictive modeling experience
• 5+ years of people management experience
• PhD in Computer Science (Machine Learning, AI, Statistics, or equivalent)
• Experience in practical work applying ML to solve complex problems for large scale applications
• Experience working with big data, machine learning and predictive modeling
• Experience in people management
• Experience with big data technologies such as AWS, Hadoop, Spark, Pig, Hive etc.
• Experience with Java, C++, or other programming language, as well as with R, MATLAB, Python, or an equivalent scripting language
• Experience researching actual applications

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow teams of Applied Scientists and Machine Learning Engineers working on conversational AI and multi-agent orchestration systems.
• Define and drive technical strategy for large-scale generative AI systems, including LLM routing, prompting, grounding, memory, tool use, personalization, and response optimization.
• Partner closely with Product, Engineering, and Tech leadership to align AI investments with long-term business and customer goals.
• Drive end-to-end delivery of production AI systems balancing quality, latency, scalability, safety, and operational reliability.
• Establish scientific and engineering best practices across experimentation, evaluation, model iteration, and production deployment.
• Lead roadmap prioritization and execution across research innovation and product delivery timelines.
• Build scalable evaluation methodologies and quality frameworks for multilingual and global customer experiences.
• Mentor and develop technical leaders across both science and engineering disciplines.
• Foster a high-performance culture centered on customer obsession, innovation, operational excellence, and strong cross-functional collaboration.

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
• sign-on payments
• restricted stock units (RSUs)

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior