Applied Science Manager, Translation Services

Have you ever wondered how Amazon launches and maintains a consistent customer experience across hundreds of countries and languages it serves its customers? If so, we have an exciting opportunity for you!
Translation Services is seeking an Applied Science Manager to own the technical vision and multi-year science roadmap spanning machine translation, multimodal content (image translation, video subtitling), and automated quality evaluation. This leader will manage scientists and MLEs, define research direction for novel problem spaces with limited industry precedent, and bridge science breakthroughs into production-ready systems operating at Amazon scale.

As a leader of the Science team of TS, this person will be responsible for leading their team in designing algorithmic solutions based on data and mathematics for translating billions of words annually across 130+ and expanding set of locales. The goal is to build solutions with minimal human touch involved in any language translation and ensure accurate translated text is available to our worldwide customers in a streamlined and optimized manner.

With access to vast amounts of data, technology, and a diverse community of talented individuals, you will have the opportunity to make a meaningful impact on the way customers and stakeholders engage with Amazon and our platform worldwide. This role requires strong technical skills, a deep understanding of machine learning approaches, and a solid grasp on NLP and LLM techniques to solve complex language translation challenges. You must have a demonstrated ability for optimizing, developing, launching, and maintaining large-scale production systems.

As a key member of the team, you will oversee all aspects of the software lifecycle: design, experimentation, implementation, and testing. You should be willing to dive deep when needed, move rapidly with a bias for action, and get things done. You should have an entrepreneurial spirit, know how to deliver, and long for the opportunity to build pioneering solutions to challenging problems. This role will demand resourcefulness and willingness to learn on both the technical and business side.

Key job responsibilities
In this role, you will work closely with business partners, applied scientists, software development engineers, and product managers to accelerate building solutions to expand translation capabilities. You will have significant influence on our overall strategy by helping define science and engineering strategy, define product features, drive system architecture, and spearhead the best-practices that enable a quality product. You will also influence the development processes, and develop well-rounded skills such as leadership, and effective project management. Building a strong development team and developing career plans for the scientists and engineers reporting to you will be a key responsibility. Throughout, you should possess creativity, curiosity, and excellent judgment to thrive in an environment of ambiguity.

A day in the life
You will spend your days collaborating with scientists, developers, customers, stakeholders, and converting the business needs into a data-driven solution. You will support a team to design and execute science products. You will dive deep into the data and balance technical execution with longer term strategy. You will grow and develop your team.

About the team
Translation Services is entering a phase where the problems ahead are fundamentally different from the problems we've solved. Our text translation stack is production-grade and serving 30+ language pairs across Retail. But the next frontier — image translation, video subtitle localization, long form text and automated quality evaluation — represents novel research problems at Amazon scale with limited industry precedent.

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS

- 3+ years of scientists or machine learning engineers management experience
- Knowledge of ML, NLP, Information Retrieval and Analytics

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

- Experience building machine learning models or developing algorithms for business application
- Experience building complex software systems, especially involving deep learning, machine learning and computer vision, that have been successfully delivered to customers

Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status, disability, or other legally protected status.

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 for more information. If the country/region you’re applying in isn’t listed, please contact your Recruiting Partner.

The base salary range for this position is listed below. Your Amazon package will include sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs). Final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience, qualifications, and location. Amazon also offers comprehensive benefits including 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, and parental leave. Learn more about our benefits at .

USA, WA, Seattle - 183,800.00 - 248,700.00 USD annually