Amazon’s Middle Mile Planning Research and Optimization Science group (mmPROS) is looking for a Senior Research Scientist specializing in design and evaluation of algorithms for predictive modeling and optimization applied to large-scale transportation planning systems. This includes the development of novel machine learning and causal modeling techniques to improve on marketplace optimization solutions.

Middle Mile Air and Ground transportation represents one of the fastest growing logistics areas within Amazon. Amazon Fulfillment Services transports millions of packages via air and ground and continues to grow year over year. The scale of this operation challenges Amazon to design, build and operate robust transportation networks that minimize the overall operational cost while meeting all customer deadlines. The Middle Mile Planning Research and Optimization Science group is charged with developing an evolving suite of decision support and optimization tools to facilitate the design of efficient air and ground transport networks, optimize the flow of packages within the network to efficiently align network capacity and shipment demand, set prices, and effectively utilize scarce resources, such as aircraft and trucks. Time horizons for these tools vary from years and months for long-term planning to hours and minutes for near-term operational decision making and disruption recovery. These tools rely heavily on mathematical optimization, stochastic simulation, meta-heuristic and machine learning techniques. In addition, Amazon often finds existing techniques do not effectively match our unique business needs which necessitates the innovation and development of new approaches and algorithms to find an adequate solution.

As an Applied Scientist responsible for middle mile transportation, you will be working closely with different teams including business leaders and engineers to design and build scalable products operating across multiple transportation modes. You will create experiments and prototype implementations of new learning algorithms and prediction techniques. You will have exposure to top level leadership to present findings of your research. You will also work closely with other scientists and also engineers to implement your models within our production system. You will implement solutions that are exemplary in terms of algorithm design, clarity, model structure, efficiency, and extensibility, and make decisions that affect the way we build and integrate algorithms across our product portfolio.