layiq

/la·yiq/adjective

worthy; deserving; fitting; suitable.

A role, opportunity, or path that merits attention, time, and pursuit.

Senior Applied Scientist, Real-Time Conversational AI , AGI at Amazon | LAYIQ

Foundation Model Scaling
Help build and train large-scale multimodal foundation models for real-time speech and audio generation, from architecture design through production-scale training
Advance the scaling and efficiency of conversational models, including the relationship between data, model size, and real-time performance
Design model architectures informed by hardware constraints and inference requirements, working with inference engineers to ensure models are servable from inception
Develop training methodologies for multimodal models that jointly process and generate speech, language, and audio in real-time streaming contexts
Contribute to the state of the art on efficient architectures and training methods for conversational AI at scale
Post-Training & Reinforcement Learning
Design and build reward models and reward functions for speech systems — capturing naturalness, fluency, conversational quality, and real-time responsiveness
Develop and apply reinforcement learning methods to shape conversational behavior — teaching models natural timing, responsiveness, and fluid interaction
Build parts of the post-training pipeline from SFT through RL alignment, optimized for real-time multimodal outputs rather than text-only generation
Design evaluation frameworks that capture the quality dimensions unique to real-time conversation (latency sensitivity, audio quality, prosody, interaction naturalness)
Real-Time Perception & Generation
Advance the team’s capabilities in real-time perception — the ability of the model to process incoming audio/speech while simultaneously generating responses
Develop techniques for natural interactive systems where the model handles concurrent input and output with human-like timing
Work at the intersection of model architecture and production constraints to ensure multimodal capabilities function within hard real-time latency budgets
Basic Qualifications
5+ years of building machine learning models for business application experience
PhD, or Master's degree and 6+ years of applied research experience
Experience programming in Java, C++, Python or related language
Hands-on experience training large-scale foundation models — direct involvement in model training, not just using pre-trained models
Experience with multimodal model architectures that jointly process or generate across speech, text, and audio modalities
Strong understanding of transformer architectures and their application to speech/audio domains
Publication record at top-tier venues (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, Interspeech, ICASSP, ACL, or equivalent)
Demonstrated ownership of a research area — driving technical direction for a workstream and collaborating effectively across scientists and engineers

Hands-on experience building real-time AI systems — speech, audio, or video
Track record with post-training methods: reinforcement learning, reward modeling, RLHF/RLAIF, or alignment techniques applied to generative models
Experience with real-time interactive systems — models that handle concurrent input and output
Experience building speech-to-speech or audio-to-audio generative models (codec models, autoregressive audio generation)
Hands-on design of reward models or reward functions specifically for speech/audio quality, naturalness, or conversational behavior
Experience with distributed training at scale — including parallelism strategies, training stability, and curriculum design
Familiarity with hardware-informed model design — understanding how architecture choices affect inference latency, memory, and cost
Background in speech recognition, speech synthesis (TTS), or speech enhancement
Experience shipping research to production at scale — models serving real users, not just benchmark results
Contributions to open-source speech/audio ML systems or widely used research codebases
Experience mentoring junior scientists and engineers
Equal Opportunity
Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status, disability, or other legally protected status.
Los Angeles County applicants: Job duties for this position include: work safely and cooperatively with other employees, supervisors, and staff; adhere to standards of excellence despite stressful conditions; communicate effectively and respectfully with employees, supervisors, and staff to ensure exceptional customer service; and follow all federal, state, and local laws and Company policies. Criminal history may have a direct, adverse, and negative relationship with some of the material job duties of this position. These include the duties and responsibilities listed above, as well as the abilities to adhere to company policies, exercise sound judgment, effectively manage stress and work safely and respectfully with others, exhibit trustworthiness and professionalism, and safeguard business operations and the Company’s reputation. Pursuant to the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
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.

Senior Applied Scientist, Real-Time Conversational AI , AGI

Employer job description

What You’ll Do

Preferred Qualifications

About this listing