What is the Amazon Applied Scientist in the broader job market?
The applied scientist is within the science job family at Amazon, which includes data scientist and research scientist. The way I understand it, the job description sits at the intersection of applied research and engineering, but usually does not involve writing production level code. I think it was invented by Amazon, and Microsoft seems to be adopting this job title as well. However, I find the position awkward. It is like a researcher, but not as academic as researchers at openAI, Brain, or MSR who publish papers. It is close to engineering, but it is not true engineering like a ML engineer or a SWE. An applied scientist could probably work as a data scientist, yet that potentially under utilizes the research and engineering skills. What is the closest job title to an Amazon applied scientist in the market? What skills or experiences should one optimize for at Amazon to maximize professional market value. Maybe the job title is indeed awkward, but let's have a constructive discussion about it :) #researchscientist #engineering #datascience
Research engineer anyone?
Applied Scientist at Amazon = Research Scientist + SDE** Research Scientist = Data Scientist with much more research experience* Data Scientist = ML + Stats knowledge * people who have gone above and beyond your standard XGBoost/ADABoost/SVM etc and defined their own methods. Someone who knows the math behind and understands how to implement these ML methods. ** Applied Scientist needs to write production level code, be part of code reviews etc.. Hope this helps.
Thanks - this definitely adds another helpful perspective! My original question though, is how well these Amazon scientist positions (especially AS) map to similarly named positions in other companies. For example, I think most AS/RS/DS positions still don't map to RS positions in AI research teams/companies such as openAI, Brain, or MSR well, simply because Amazon is a more product focused company. Thus, I feel most scientists at Amazon do not have the AI publication activity/experience required by these groups. As such, I feel if a AS scientist wants to switch companies, their best bet is either PhD level software engineer, research engineer, ML engineer, or DS (when the DS bar at other companies is higher) at other companies. Any thoughts in this direction? Thanks!
Every organization is different and has its own set of requirements from its science teams. The field of data science, ML, AI is still evolving and job roles will take many more years to be standardized. Good part is at least BI, Data analyst, DE are separated from data science now and most of the industry understands the difference. Scientists at Amazon have thousands of publications and patents. Check for any L6 scientist and you can definitely find publications. When AS wants to switch companies, they will have a tough time but at the same time they are like unicorns (imagine some one who knows coding in Java/Python as well as Deep learning details). So companies are aware of their capabilities despite not having the right designation. As I mentioned, it’s an evolving field and will take years before standardization of roles happen
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