Economist, Automated Profitability Management

DESCRIPTION

Amazon.com strives to be Earth's most customer-centric company where customers can shop in our stores to find and discover anything they want to buy. We hire the world's brightest minds, offering them a fast paced, technologically sophisticated and friendly work environment. Economists at Amazon partner closely with senior management, business stakeholders, scientist and engineers, and economist leadership to solve key business problems ranging from Amazon Web Services, Kindle, Prime, inventory planning, international retail, third party merchants, search, pricing, labor and employment planning, effective benefits (health, retirement, etc.) and beyond. Amazon Economists build econometric models using our world class data systems and apply approaches from a variety of skillsets – applied macro/time series, applied micro, econometric theory, empirical IO, empirical health, labor, public economics and related fields are all highly valued skillsets at Amazon. This specific economist role is part of the Automated Profitability Management (APM) team whose vision is to offer the world’s most advanced suite of products to optimize and manage the contractual agreements between a retailer and its suppliers. Our teams build software and machine learning models to optimize contract negotiations, and exchange of goods between Amazon Retail and tens of thousands of brands ("vendors") offering millions of products available to hundreds of millions of Amazon customers worldwide. We handle product costs (How much should Amazon pay for this product?) but also cover supply chain (Who pays the initial shipping costs?), marketing (Should a vendor fund advertising?), reverse-logistics (Who pays for damaged products? What about unsold inventory?) and more.
Our mission is to provide to our customers the world’s largest product assortment at competitive prices, through long term partnership with our vendors. You will build econometrics and machine learning (ML) models that combine internal cost and pricing data, with external inflation signals (e.g. commodity prices, labor rates, transportation costs) to determine where contract changes are warranted. Where possible, you will design and conduct experiments to estimate the long term impact of the new contracts on customers, vendors, and Amazon. To do so, you will work closely with other economists, ML scientists, product managers, and software developers to implement and scale your solutions. Key job responsibilities
Develop econometric and causal models to improve the outcome of contract negotiations for all products offered by Amazon Retail worldwide.
Determine the causal impacts of systems, strategy, or inputs changes on business growth and profitability through experiments or observational methods.
Collaborate with product managers, applied scientists, economists, and software developers to incorporate economic models into negotiation tooling. We are open to hiring candidates to work out of one of the following locations: Seattle, WA, USA

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS

PhD in Economics, Quantitative Marketing, Finance, or closely related field.