Principal, BusDev, Academic Research Initiatives

The Principal Business Development role in the Amazon Research Initiatives (ARI) team is responsible for driving mechanisms that connect Amazon's mid to long-term scientific areas with potential academic research solutions. This position focuses on understanding business needs to drive research engagements with leading research institutions across the world and to discover research ideas to bring back into Amazon to drive innovation.


Key job responsibilities
The ideal candidate is a deep thinker who excels in cross-functional teams and thrives in fast-paced environments. They should be adept at identifying strategic opportunities, evaluating academic research solutions, and establishing processes to measure ongoing investments. Key attributes include strong analytical and communication skills, excellent judgment, high standards, and the ability to think strategically while maintaining tactical focus. The successful candidate will be results-oriented with a big-picture vision, capable of inspiring others and working effectively across various business units.


About the team
Amazon's Academic Research Initiatives (ARI) team's mission to make Amazon a place where every transformative idea from academia is efficiently discovered, evaluated, and disseminated to accelerate innovation on behalf of our customers. ARI is an academic research investment management team that sources research proposals from top global universities, matches promising ideas with Amazon business funders, manages research portfolios, diffuses learnings across Amazon to maximize learning impact, and disrupts once salient technology trends emerge. We provide guardrails to avoid investment waste and connect leaders with similar research interests to amplify their work.
Businesses that opt into the ARI model can expect an academic investment strategy that continuously aligns their long-term innovation needs with strategy execution, measurement, and iteration, and tie in to Amazon’s broader technical community.