Principal Economist

Principal Economist, Ads Econ at Amazon Science

Amazon Advertising is one of Amazon's fastest growing and most profitable businesses. Our products are used daily to surface new selection and provide customers a wider set of product choices along their shopping journeys. The business is focused on generating value for shoppers as well as advertisers. Our team uses a combination of econometrics, machine learning, and data science to build disruptive products for all our Advertising products. We also generate insights to guide Amazon Advertising strategy, providing direct support to senior leadership.

We are looking for an experienced Economist who has a deep passion for building state-of-art causal models and ads measurement and optimization solutions, ability to communicate data insights and scientific vision, and execute strategic projects.

As An Economist On This Team, You Will

• Lead the design and analysis of large-scale experiments to measure advertising effectiveness across Amazon's advertising products.
• Develop novel causal inference and econometric methodologies to solve attribution and incrementality measurement challenges at scale.
• Invent new optimization frameworks that translate measurement insights into actionable bidding, targeting, and budget allocation strategies for advertisers.
• Define the long-term science roadmap for ads measurement and optimization, identifying high-impact research directions and driving alignment across engineering, product, and science teams.
• Build and refine structural and reduced-form models that quantify the causal impact of advertising on consumer behavior, sales, and brand outcomes.
• Partner with engineering teams to operationalize econometric models into production systems serving millions of advertisers.
• Mentor and develop a team of economists and applied scientists, raising the bar on methodological rigor and scientific impact.
• Influence senior leadership through clear communication of complex economic concepts, shaping investment decisions and product strategy.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with product managers, engineers, and business leaders to translate business problems into well-defined economic questions with scalable solutions.

Why you will love this opportunity:

Amazon is investing heavily in building a world-class advertising business. This team defines and delivers a collection of advertising products that drive discovery and sales. Our solutions generate billions in revenue and drive long-term growth for Amazon’s Retail and Marketplace businesses. We deliver billions of ad impressions, millions of clicks daily, and break fresh ground to create world-class products. We are a highly motivated, collaborative, and fun-loving team with an entrepreneurial spirit - with a broad mandate to experiment and innovate.

Impact and Career Growth:

You will invent new experiences and influence customer-facing shopping experiences to help suppliers grow their retail business and the auction dynamics that leverage native advertising; this is your opportunity to work within the fastest-growing businesses across all of Amazon! Define a long-term science vision for our advertising business, driven from our customers' needs, translating that direction into specific plans for research and applied scientists, as well as engineering and product teams. This role combines science leadership, organizational ability, technical strength, product focus, and business understanding.

Basic Qualifications

• PhD in Economics, Computer Science, or highly related field (Statistics, Finance, Math).
• 10+ years in industry, consulting, government, or academic research.
• Experience with big data and machine learning or data science.
• Coding ability in a scripting language such as R, Python, or STATA.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in developing and executing an analytic vision to solve business-relevant problems.
• Experience in building analytic or scientific data products or solutions.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills to convey complicated processes and systems to business partners and senior leadership.
• Applicants with considerably more and broader experience are also strongly encouraged.
• Strong track record in performing high-quality analysis of data at scale.

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

Los Angeles County applicants: Job duties for this position include: work safely and cooperatively with other employees, supervisors, and staff; adhere to standards of excellence despite stressful conditions; communicate effectively and respectfully with employees, supervisors, and staff to ensure exceptional customer service; and follow all federal, state, and local laws and Company policies. Criminal history may have a direct, adverse, and negative relationship with some of the material job duties of this position. These include the duties and responsibilities listed above, as well as the abilities to adhere to company policies, exercise sound judgment, effectively manage stress and work safely and respectfully with others, exhibit trustworthiness and professionalism, and safeguard business operations and the Company’s reputation. Pursuant to the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

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 https://amazon.jobs/content/en/how-we-hire/accommodations 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 https://amazon.jobs/en/benefits.

USA, CA, Culver City - 189,400.00 - 256,200.00 USD annually

USA, NY, New York - 208,300.00 - 281,800.00 USD annually

USA, WA, SEATTLE - 189,400.00 - 256,200.00 USD annually

Key skills/competency

• Econometrics
• Causal Inference
• Machine Learning
• Data Science
• Experiment Design
• Optimization
• Python
• R
• STATA
• Leadership