Research Scientist at Amazon
Do all Research Scientist at Amazon have PhD? Is it possible to transition to Research Scientist or Data Scientist position from a BIE position? I have experience in NLP, Regression, Classification algos but never thought of applying for this position thinking I would never get a call. However, I stumbled upon a profile on Linkedin who has an MS in MIS and got an offer for Research Scientist right out of grad school. No publications also.
It is possible to be RS without PhD or transition to RS with some ML background. Transitioning to DS is much easier from BIE. However they expect you solved atleast one solid ML problem in your academic or personal project or current role. Some teams also require RS to have PhD so you can explore until you find a team that doesn’t require that.
That sounds great!
The level / expectation of RS in Amazon is significantly lower than at Google, Facebook or other Research Institutes like IBM and so on. An MS from a nonCS background and any MS that is somewhat related to statistics or CS (eg., Operations Research, EE and so on) is all you need to apply for an RS in Amazon. Most RS don’t have a single paper published or have ever written one. Amazon organises very low level internal conferences to get these RS to publish something there and show for their promotion.
Amazon Research Scientist position is a joke and can’t be compared to that of Google, Facebook, MSR or IBM research. I have seen many non-phd’s as RS at Amazon. And yes they have no publications.
What school is he from?
Lets just say not the ivy leagues or top Engineering schools.. I just wanted to know if the interviews really focus on PHD level knowledge or does it vary by the team?
It's possible to get RE at Amazon without a PhD but not super common.