Senior Applied Scientist
Technology, Data & Digital · Data, AI & Analytics · Data Science · Machine Learning · Artificial Intelligence
In short
As a Senior Applied Scientist on the Copilot Agents & Search Quality team, you will drive innovation in machine learning and large language models to modernize search algorithms for Microsoft products. You will lead research, develop advanced retrieval methods, and collaborate across disciplines to improve search quality and deploy solutions at scale.
Responsibilities
- Lead applied research to enhance retrieval quality for Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, Copilot Search, Work IQ, and agent experiences.
- Modernize the search stack using sparse and dense retrieval methods, enterprise-adapted models, and advanced query-understanding techniques.
- Define and measure retrieval quality using datasets, offline evaluation, statistical analysis, and production experiments.
- Own research-backed solutions from problem formulation through deployment, balancing relevance, latency, and efficiency.
- Provide scientific leadership, partner with product and engineering teams, and mentor junior scientists.
Requirements
- Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 4+ years related experience; OR Master's Degree AND 3+ years related experience; OR Doctorate AND 1+ year(s) related experience; OR equivalent experience.
- Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements, including Microsoft Cloud Background Check.
Desired Qualifications
- Master's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 6+ years related experience; OR Doctorate AND 3+ years related experience; OR equivalent experience.
- 3+ years experience creating publications (e.g., patents, libraries, peer-reviewed academic papers).
- Experience presenting at conferences or other events as an invited speaker.
- 3+ years experience conducting research as part of a research program.
- 1+ year(s) experience developing and deploying live production systems.
- 1+ year(s) experience developing and deploying products or systems at multiple points in the product cycle.
- Experience with agentic search, including query planning, iterative retrieval, evidence selection, and evaluating the quality and efficiency of grounded responses.
- Experience applying machine learning to information retrieval, search relevance, or related retrieval problems.
- Experience shipping and evaluating deep-learning models in production at scale.
- Solid programming skills in Python and experience with a modern deep-learning framework such as PyTorch.
- Experience designing offline evaluations and interpreting online experiments to make product decisions.
- Ability to lead an ambiguous technical problem and collaborate with engineering and product teams.
Benefits
- The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $119,800 - $234,700 per year.
- For San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, the base pay range is USD $160,200 - $261,000 per year.
- Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation.
Skills
Machine LearningLarge Language ModelsDeep LearningInformation RetrievalNLPPythonPyTorch
#Copilot#Machine Learning#LLM#Search
About Microsoft
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Every company has a mission. What's ours? To empower every person and every organization to achieve more. We believe technology can and should be a force for good and that meaningful innovation contributes to a brighter world in the future and today. Our culture doesn’t just encourage curiosity; it embraces it. Each day we make progress together by showing up as our authentic selves. We show up with a learn-it-all mentality. We show up cheering on others, knowing their success doesn't diminish our own. We show up every day open to learning our own biases, changing our behavior, and inviting…
Company
MicrosoftJob Posted
3 days ago
Employment Type
Full Time
Work mode
Hybrid
Salary
US$119,800–234,700 / year
Experience Level
Senior
Locations
United States
Qualification
Undergraduate, Master, Doctoral
Applicants
Be an early applicant
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