PXT Central Science (PXTCS) builds the analytical foundations that shape how Amazon attracts, develops, and retains talent at a scale no other company operates. Our models and research directly influence decisions affecting over a million employees worldwide, from compensation and attrition strategy to employee engagement and workforce planning
The Director of Qualitative Research and Survey Science owns the qualitative user research practice for People eXperience and Technology Central Science (PXTCS) and leads the science behind Amazon's state-of-the-art employee surveys, setting the standard for how Amazon measures what its employees are experiencing. The questions that matter most in this role are the ones numbers alone cannot settle, and that often run ahead of demand — identifying the challenges leaders will face before they ask, and building the methods to address them. How is the culture changing as the company evolves? What are employees experiencing that no metric on a dashboard captures? Where are employee concerns emerging that have not yet shown up in any data? These factors drive business outcomes, resist clean quantification, and require creative, mixed-methods approaches to address.
Doing this well starts with knowing what Amazon's leaders are contending with. You will be a voice in senior leader forums, learning firsthand which people problems are hardest and judging which of them research can move. From there, you will design the approach, working in close partnership with the quantitative research leaders in PXTCS, so that qualitative work, survey measurement, and quantitative analysis combine into one answer rather than three separate ones. You will deliver findings directly to senior leadership, on the timeline the decision requires, framed as actions those leaders can take. You will be a strategic advisor to PXT leaders on what aspects of the employee experience Amazon can and should measure, how much.
Key job responsibilities
• Identify the workforce challenges senior leaders have not yet named, and partner with quantitative science leaders to build a mixed-methods research agenda that addresses them.
• Develop and apply creative, technically rigorous qualitative and survey approaches that measure changes in the workforce that are not captured by quantitative data.
• Represent this work in senior leader forums, translating findings into decisions leaders can act on.
• Maintain and raise the bar on the science behind Amazon's employee survey program, coordinating with senior leaders across Amazon so survey content delivers actionable insights for their businesses.
• Provide guidance on qualitative and survey methods to teams across PXT, so employee research across Amazon meets a consistent standard.
• Run the practice as an operation — set the intake and prioritization mechanisms and manage a stakeholder portfolio across PXT, so the team's capacity goes to the questions that matter most.
• Lead through managers, building and developing a team of qualitative researchers and survey scientists.
About the team
PXT Central Science is Amazon's people-science R&D organization. We develop causal inference methods, predictive models, and decision-support tools that operate at the intersection of economics, machine learning, and organizational science. Our work spans employee experience, workforce planning, compensation, talent acquisition, and employee relations — always grounded in rigorous methodology and always aimed at real-world impact.
