Senior Research Scientist, Community Operations

About Amazon

Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. We are driven by the excitement of building technologies, inventing products, and providing services that change lives. We embrace new ways of doing things, make decisions quickly, and are not afraid to fail. We have the scope and capabilities of a large company, and the spirit and heart of a small one.

Together, Amazonians research and develop new technologies from Amazon Web Services to Alexa on behalf of our customers: shoppers, sellers, content creators, and developers around the world.

Our mission is to be Earth's most customer-centric company. Our actions, goals, projects, programs, and inventions begin and end with the customer top of mind.

You'll also hear us say that at Amazon, it's always "Day 1." What do we mean? That our approach remains the same as it was on Amazon's very first day - to make smart, fast decisions, stay nimble, invent, and focus on delighting our customers.

Position

Amazon Community Operations works to anticipate our communities’ needs and build positive net impact anywhere we operate. From Operational Excellence to Community Outreach and Employee Engagement, Community Operations is defining what it means to be a positive presence in the community. This is a fast-paced, start-up environment where creative problem solving, operational excellence, and building relationships are the core of our day-to-day work.

The Amazon Community Operations team is looking for a Senior Research Scientist to support the team’s vision working within its Community Listening Mechanisms team. This role will report into a Research Team Leader responsible for community sentiment research standards and practice and supporting data-informed decision making.

In this role, you will act as a primary point of contact for community sentiment research and interact with a wide variety of stakeholders – internal and external. You will lead end-to-end research from concept to implementation, translate technical information into actionable insight, and supporting data-driven decision making at all levels of the organization. To do this efficiently and effectively, you will regularly collaborate with other researchers, analysts, field teams, leaders and builders on solutions that scale to communities across Europe and other regions where Amazon operates locally. This role is highly visible within Amazon and provides opportunity to influence thinking across multiple teams and businesses.

Key job responsibilities

• Develop and evaluate measurement/structural/causal models that help describe, explain, predict community sentiment
• Conduct experimental and quasi-experimental research that supports community outreach programs and partnerships 
• Identify, develop, and implement advanced survey methods to collect and accurately estimate data in relatively small, hyperlocal geographies
• Seek to understand problems and opportunities in the communities Amazon serves by meeting with stakeholders and discussing practical requirements for useful research design, measurement, analysis
• Provide positive, constructive feedback to others and provide mentorship to peers to help grow and develop team talent

Your qualification

• Master’s degree or equivalent experience in a social science field
• Demonstrable expertise in research design for experiments, quasi-experiments, and non-experiments 
• Demonstrable experience conducting end-to-end quantitative research in an applied setting
• Ability to translate technical jargon and concepts for non-technical audiences
• Proficient with at least one statistical program (e.g., R, Python, Stata)

Will be a plus

In addition to the basic qualifications for this role:

• Expertise in using ML models to analyze social data and understanding important limitations
• Experience conducting mixed-method research in a community setting 
• Expertise and practical experience with advanced survey topics (e.g., non-probability sampling, MRP/SAE)
• Expertise in attitude theory and measurement (e.g., formation, structure, function, content, change)
• Experience evaluating interventions designed to impact community-level outcomes
• Good time management and project management
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills