Principal Applied Scientist

Microsoft Teams is the hub for teamwork, integrating all the people, content, and tools your team needs to be more engaged and effective. It is core to Microsoft’s modern work, modern life, and modern education value proposition. We are reinventing the way people communicate and work together across the globe. We own the infrastructure that enables complex orchestration of Copilot workflows to put powerful AI capabilities at the users’ fingertips.

AI is now undergoing a transformational change with the advent of LLMs. We are seeking a Principal Applied Scientist with expertise in working with Large Language Models (LLMs) to design scalable systems using LLMs. As a Principal Applied Scientist, you will design and build systems that allow LLMs to reason over large amounts of data as well as leveraging lighter weight models for specific scenarios. We are looking for an individual who has experience working with research teams and partnering with them to deliver joint solutions. This can range from collaborating to build fine-tuned models to devising ways to construct custom LLMs for specific product needs.

We are excited to hear from candidates who are passionate about making a significant impact on how people interact with their computers and who are eager about the opportunity to be at the forefront of growing new business for Microsoft. This is a rare chance to be part of cutting-edge technology that is poised to revolutionize productivity and innovation.

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. 

In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day.

Responsibilities

• Conduct applied science experiments, create and validate metrics, develop ML pipeline and modeling algorithm in the area of Large Language Models, Natural Language Processing, Information Retrieval, and Machine Learning. 
• Develop and deploy conversational and language understanding models at scale.  
• Following and advancing best practices for Responsible AI and Privacy Preserving Machine Learning.  
• Collaborate closely with Microsoft Research, Microsoft AI groups, Microsoft Azure, AI platform teams, and product teams to create the next generation of AI innovation in our products and services. 
• Embody our culture and values    

Qualifications

Required/Minimum Qualifications 

• Bachelor’s degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 6+ years technical engineering experience designing, building, and running cloud services at large scale in languages including, but not limited to, C#, C++, Java, JavaScript, or Python.  
  • OR Master'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 Doctorate in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 3+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research)
  • OR equivalent experience.
• 4+ years of experience with design, implementation, debugging and testing of complex distributed services.  
• 3+ years of experience working on Machine Learning models specifically with Natural language-based models, vector databases and graph databases.