Research Software Engineer - Multiple Levels- AI Frontiers

Microsoft Research AI Frontiers lab is seeking applications for the position of Research Software Engineer – Generative AI to join our team in NY or Redmond. 

  
In AI Frontiers, we believe the next chapter of Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be shaped by reliable digital workers that can be first class citizens in agent-native organizations. This means shifting from a paradigm where humans do the work assisted by AI, to one where autonomous AI agents execute entire workflows, collaborating with humans and other agents and guided by human direction and oversight.  

Our projects have been guided by this mission, such as our agentic reasoning models (Phi family), our latest Computer Use Model (Fara), our synthetic data generation pipeline (AgentInstruct), our agent frameworks and experiences (AutoGen, Magentic-One and Magentic-UI), as well as our agentic ecosystems (Magentic Marketplace).  

Our ongoing research focuses on four large areas: 

• Closing the capability gap of current agents by enhancing their reasoning, enabling continual learning and adaptation across various tasks and modalities. 
• Closing the reliability gap of current agents through improved robustness and human interactions.
• Reimagining workflows for an agent-native world where autonomous agents collaborate seamlessly with each other and with humans.
• Creating rich end-to-end experiences that showcase these capabilities in real world agentic applications. 

As a Research Software Engineer – Generative AI you will play a crucial role in developing, improving, and exploring the capabilities of Generative AI models and agentic applications. Your work will have a significant impact on the development of cutting-edge technologies, advancing state-of-the-art and creating practical solutions to real-world problems.

• As Research Software Engineer in AI Frontiers, you will contribute to one of our core pillars working with researchers, engineers, and product groups to create research breakthroughs and realize your ideas in products and services used worldwide. 
• You will create data, evaluation and training pipelines for training agentic models  to reliably use computers, tools and complete tasks collaborating with other agents and humans
• You’ll showcase your system design thinking, understanding of both user-facing technologies and GenAI technologies to drive efficient, high-quality execution and communication, while launching innovative AI features. 
• You will work with our Technical Program Management (PM) team to understand customer needs and our research portfolio to create compelling proof of concepts so customers can take advantage of our innovations 

Required Qualifications: 

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, System Engineering or related field AND 2+ years’ technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, Python, OR equivalent experience.

Preferred Qualifications   

• Master's Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, System Engineering, Human Computer Interaction, or related field AND 3+ years experience working in a software engineering team and/or shipping production code OR equivalent experience 
• 4+ years of python experience. 
• 2+ years’ experience working on GenAI infrastructure, products or prototypes. 
• 2+ years architecting and implementing GenAI systems and/or the infrastructure for building these systems.
• Experience in developing and maintaining open-source projects. Providing a link to GitHub profile (if available) and/or code samples, is highly encour