Applied Scientist, Amazon Transportation

Amazon's Middle Mile Science group is looking for an Applied Scientist to build machine learning and optimization models for large-scale transportation planning systems. This includes the development of dynamic pricing and network planning models to improve operations and services for our external freight customers.

The Middle Mile Science group develops optimization and machine learning systems that power Amazon's freight transportation network, from network design and pricing to real-time load planning and capacity utilization. The scale of Amazon's fulfillment operations requires robust transportation networks that minimize cost while meeting all customer deadlines. Real-time execution depends on state-of-the-art optimization and artificial intelligence to coordinate thousands of operators and drivers. This includes shipper-facing and carrier-facing marketplace algorithms as well as network planning and optimization tools. Amazon often finds that existing techniques do not match our unique business needs, driving the innovation of new approaches and algorithms.

As an Applied Scientist focusing on external freight within middle mile transportation, you will work closely with business leaders, engineers, and fellow scientists to design and build scalable products operating across multiple transportation modes. You will create experiments and prototypes of new machine learning and optimization applications, present research findings to senior leadership, and implement your models within production systems. You will write production-quality code designed for
scalability and maintainability, and make decisions that affect how we build and integrate algorithms across our product portfolio.


About the team
Our Middle Mile Marketplace Science team builds the algorithms for Amazon’s rapidly growing freight marketplace. Amazon contracts with 3P shippers and a network of independent carriers, using a mix of contract structures with varying service and risk profiles. Our work focuses on mechanisms and learning algorithms to optimize pricing and matching in this complex marketplace, and continually improve the experience for carriers and shippers. This is an area with many challenging problems and a huge business impact for Amazon!