Senior Applied Scientist at Microsoft

As a Senior Applied Scientist in MSAI you will be at the forefront of technological innovation, working collaboratively to bring research to life in our products and services. You will contribute directly to the evolution of Microsoft 365 Copilot, working on advanced conversation, search and recommendation systems powered by large language models (LLMs). You’ll be part of a team that transforms how users interact with information, helping them work smarter and faster.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

Responsibilities

• Advance the science: Design experiments, validate metrics, and build ML pipelines for reinforcement learning, advanced reasoning techniques, and LLMs while ensuring Responsible AI and Privacy-Preserving ML best practices.
• Drive product innovation: Collaborate with Engineering, Product, and Design teams to transform research insights into scalable Microsoft 365 Copilot features used by millions.
• Cross-team collaboration: Partner with Microsoft Research, Azure, AI platform teams, and product teams to integrate cutting-edge research into production systems.
• Champion customer-focused impact: Engage with customers, analyze user feedback and telemetry data to identify pain points and prioritize high-impact ML improvements.
• Technical leadership: Mentor junior scientists and engineers while establishing ML best practices across the product organization.
• Define and measure success: Create KPIs and success metrics that align with business objectives and track product performance in production.
• Stay at the research forefront: Contribute to the applied science community through publications, and internal knowledge sharing. Publishing is encouraged, though not required. 

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 4+ years related experience (e.g., statistics predictive analytics, research)
• OR Master's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 3+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research)
• OR Doctorate in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 1+ year(s) related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research)
• OR equivalent experience.