Operations Research Scientist - Global Sourcing

Amazon’s Global Sourcing (GS) group is looking for operations research scientists who want to build Amazon’s next generation of inventory planning and sourcing systems. As part of Amazon’s Inventory Planning and Control (IPC) technology group, we design and build systems that evaluate Amazon’s supplier base, select the best vendor to source the items in real time, create purchase requests, and automatically react to vendors response. Our software is used by every country Amazon services, and is critical in ensuring that the products our customers want are available when they need them.

As a Research Scientist in GS, you will use your experience to develop new strategies and algorithms used for sourcing multi-billion dollar worth of inventory. Working closely with fellow research scientists, product managers, and software developers, you will use your experience in research, modeling, statistics, and simulation to design new models, simulate their performance, and evaluate their benefits and impacts to sourcing cost for Amazon. Using your analysis you will be present your findings to your peers, and work with product managers to integrate them into our product plans.

This position requires superior analytical thinkers, able to quickly approach large ambiguous problems and apply their knowledge to identify opportunities for further research. You should be able to independently mine and analyze data, and be able to use any necessary programming and statistical analysis software to do so. Successful candidates must thrive in fast-paced environments which encourage collaborative and creative problem solving, be able to measure and estimate risks, constructively critique peer research, and align research focuses with the Amazon’s strategic needs.

• MS in Operations Research, Industrial Engineering, Statistics, Mathematics, Economics, Computer Science, or similar technical field.


• Experience in statistics and probability, particularly their application in systems analysis and operations research.


• Ability to develop system prototypes


• Experience with SQL and Statistical Computing tools (R, SPSS, etc).


• Strong problem solving and data analysis skills.

• PhD in relevant discipline (see basic qualifications).


• 2+ years of related work experience.


• Experience with design, application, and optimization of complex logistics software management systems.


• Professional experience with inventory planning and supply chain management (forecasting, planning, optimization, and/or logistics).


• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.


• Experience working with data mining on large data sets (“big data”).

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