Amazon University Talent Acquisition (AUTA) is seeking a Senior Manager to serve as the Single Threaded Leader (STL) for Science campus recruiting. In this role, you will own the end-to-end university talent acquisition strategy, team, and delivery for Amazon"s science disciplines globally. Amazon"s science community spans multiple businesses, geographies, and hiring channels. The talent is highly specialized, relationships are long-cycle, and reputational sensitivity is high. You will design the team structure, mechanisms, and strategy needed to protect and grow Amazon"s position within academic science communities while delivering measurable hiring outcomes.
This is a high-ambiguity, high-impact leadership role. You will coordinate across five Talent Acquisition organizations without direct authority over those teams, acting as the connective tissue that ensures a unified talent acquisition approach for Amazon"s most competitive talent segments. You will partner with PhD candidates, world-class researchers, distinguished scientists, and academic faculty, operating in communities where a single interaction shapes Amazon"s reputation for years.
You are a senior recruiting leader who thrives in ambiguous environments, has deep credibility with technical and science stakeholders, and can build structure where none exists while maintaining the relationship sensitivity that academic communities require.
This role offers significant scope, executive visibility, and the opportunity to build and lead high-performing teams in a fast-paced, ambiguous, and deeply collaborative environment.
Key job responsibilities
(-) Serve as the Single Threaded Leader for AUTA Science, owning the end-to-end campus recruiting and intern program strategy for all science disciplines.
(-) Author and maintain a multi-year Science Talent Acquisition strategy document that articulates Amazon"s competitive position by discipline, pipeline health, investment priorities, and measurable outcomes. Use this document to align cross-functional stakeholders and influence resource allocation decisions.
(-) Define goals and long-term strategy (3+ years) for science campus recruiting; establish success metrics, KPIs, and reporting standards that provide real-time visibility into pipeline health, time-to-fill, conversion rates, and competitive loss by discipline.
(-) Develop and execute a unified faculty engagement strategy, maintaining a single relationship map per discipline and coordinating outreach to avoid duplication and conflicting messaging across TA teams.
(-) Build and maintain a unified conference strategy for key science venues (NeurIPS, ICML, ICRA, CAV, PLDI, etc.), coordinating booth presence, speaking slots, and candidate engagement events across organizational boundaries.
(-) Partner with Science business leaders and Finance to influence early demand confirmation, validate headcount allocation by discipline, and ensure demand timing preserves the full recruiting season for specialized talent pipelines.
(-) Serve as the single TA point of accountability for science leaders within AUTA"s scope, regardless of level or hiring channel, ensuring a consistent and high-quality candidate experience across all touchpoints.
(-) Partner with domain-aligned STLs (Automated Reasoning, AI, Robotics) and the Amazon Science STL to align on cross-discipline priorities, escalation paths, and candidate surfacing across all available requisitions.
(-) Design and implement the team structure and operating mechanisms required to coordinate science hiring across five TA organizations without direct authority over those teams.
(-) Lead, develop, and inspire a team of recruiting professionals, setting clear performance expectations, providing coaching and career development, and building organizational capability to deliver against ambitious science hiring goals.
(-) Define role clarity, documented handoff protocols, and weekly defect tracking across the Science recruiting ecosystem to ensure clean execution at scale.
(-) Own the science intern-to-FTE conversion process, proactively matching inclined interns to available FTE headcount to protect professor relationships, preserve the Intern First strategy, and prevent reputational damage in finite academic communities.
(-) Own Science TA reporting to AUTA and Science leadership, including pipeline health by discipline, conversion rates, competitive loss analysis, and time-to-fill, delivered through standardized mechanisms (WBRs/MBRs).
(-) Identify and implement systemic process improvements and infrastructure investments (e.g., domain sub-codes, automated dashboards) that reduce complexity for science leaders and candidates, enabling the team to scale impact across disciplines.
(-) Manage significantly complex problems, decisions, and escalations; decompose them into straightforward solutions; and proactively mitigate risks created by organizational complexity and the fragmented TA landscape.
(-) Represent AUTA Science at senior leadership forums, communicating pipeline health, risks, strategic recommendations, and program outcomes with clarity and executive presence.
About the team
Amazon"s University Talent Acquisition (AUTA) team plays a pivotal role in fueling Amazon"s growth and innovation. Guided by a customer-obsessed approach, we partner with business leaders across the enterprise to identify, recruit, and develop student talent from diverse backgrounds worldwide. Our commitment to excellence drives us to raise the bar with every hire, balancing scalability with a relentless focus on quality. Operational rigor, data-driven insights, and a globally-minded, locally-responsive approach enable us to deliver seamless experiences that meet the evolving needs of a dynamic and growing business.
The Science STL role sits at the intersection of AUTA and Amazon"s broader science talent strategy. You will partner with PhD candidates, world-class researchers, distinguished scientists, and academic faculty, operating in communities where a single interaction shapes Amazon"s reputation for years.