Overview

AI has created an unprecedented opportunity to make work better for hundreds of millions of people. Microsoft’s productivity division is hiring Senior and Principal Applied Scientists to help ensure we maximize this amazing opportunity. Our scientists collaborate closely with people across Microsoft’s product teams and Microsoft Research to see their ideas realized in products and services like M365 Copilot, Word, Teams, Windows, Surface, One Drive, Share Point, Windows, Surface, Outlook, PowerPoint, Power Platform, Copilot Studio, and Dynamics 365. They also contribute back to the scientific community through peer-reviewed publications at top venues, scientific presentations, and beyond.

We are looking for Senior Applied Scientist who is creative, self-driven, curious, people-oriented and comfortable defining a path through ambiguity towards high-level goals. Research areas of interest include but are certainly not limited to reinforcement learning, agentic systems multimodal modeling, post-training techniques and their application, human-centered artificial intelligence (AI), domain-specific large language model (LLM) applications (e.g. long-form writing assistance), personalization, computational social science, memory, agentic retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), real-time AI systems, collaborative AI, privacy-preserving AI, trustworthy AI, data-centric AI, AI flywheels, and multilingual AI.

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

• Defining, leading, and helping to conduct research projects that simultaneously advance the state-of-the-art and directly benefit Microsoft’s core productivity products.
• Shape product direction by integrating rigorous scientific methods into the product lifecycle.
• Collaborating and coordinating with people in a range of roles, including researchers, engineers, product managers, designers, and other key product stakeholders. Serving as a bridge between research and product.
• Teaching, guiding, and tutoring colleagues without research backgrounds in state-of-the-art techniques and research best practices.
• Sharing your research with others via a range of means, including publication, to enable others to build on your work and to contribute to the understanding of our products as cutting-edge and science driven.
• Effectively communicating with product leaders throughout the planning and execution of applied research projects, which often involves learning and teaching complex concepts.

Qualifications Required Qualifications:

• A record of publications in top-tier scientific venues (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, NAACL, KDD, WWW, CHI, PNAS, Nature, EMNLP, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, CoRL).

• Doctorate (or currently pursuing) in Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, Information Science, Statistics or related field AND 1+ years of experience (any research assistantship, teaching assistantship, or internship is considered relevant experience)

• OR Master’s Degree AND 3+ years of relevant experience (any research assistantship, teaching assistantship, or internship is considered relevant experience)

• OR Bachelor’s Degree AND 4+ years of relevant experience (any research assistantship, teaching assistantship, or internship is considered relevant experience)

• OR equivalent experience.

• Business fluency in English (read, write, speak).

Other Requirements:

Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings:

• Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

(Optional) As part of your application, when listing your publications, please distinguish between workshop papers and main conference papers.

(Optional) Names and contact information of at least three established researchers familiar with your research who will be willing to write a letter of reference. We would recommend that one of these people be your Ph.D. advisor if you are within 3 years of graduation.

(Optional) A cover letter discussing your interest in the role and how your existing research might contribute to Microsoft’s productivity products.

(Optional) A brief academic statement that outlines both your research achievements and agenda and up to two papers that highlight your research interests.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Proven real-world impact from your research, demonstrated through shipped products, improved user experiences, or other measurable benefits for diverse stakeholders.
• At least one internship or prior role at a leading technology company, or start-up, or related organizations.

#EiP #PhD #Applied Sciences #M365

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.