Microsoft · 1 week ago
Principal Applied Scientist
Redmond, WA
Full-time
Hybrid
Senior Level, Lead/Staff
$140K/yr - $275K/yr
6+ years expMicrosoft is at the forefront of delivering world-class search quality across its ecosystem. They are seeking a Principal Applied Scientist to deliver breakthrough applied machine learning and information retrieval solutions at enterprise scale, focusing on enhancing Copilot-driven search experiences.
Agentic AIApplication Performance ManagementArtificial Intelligence (AI)Business DevelopmentDevOpsInformation ServicesInformation TechnologyManagement Information SystemsNetwork SecuritySoftware
Responsibilities
Drive end-to-end applied science projects: From ideation and design to implementation, experimentation, and shipping, you will lead high-impact projects that directly improve Copilot Chat, Copilot Search, and BizChat experiences. This includes identifying search and relevance gaps, formulating innovative hypotheses, and delivering scalable solutions
Inspire help to grow a high-performing applied science team: mentor, and empower a team of applied scientists-owning their technical direction, project execution, and career development. You will guide day-to-day work, ensure scientific and engineering rigor, and be accountable for the team's output and impact
Innovate with scientific rigor: Invent and apply cutting-edge techniques in machine learning, natural language processing, and information retrieval to address real-world challenges at enterprise scale. You will design novel approaches for improving retrieval, ranking, query understanding, and semantic search in Copilot systems
Document, share, and amplify learnings: Promote a culture of transparency and innovation by capturing experimental results, documenting methodology, and publishing internal learnings. You'll drive knowledge sharing that enables broader impact across the organization
Translate business goals into scientific strategy: Partner closely with product and business stakeholders to align team efforts with high-priority objectives. You will translate ambiguous product requirements into clear, data-driven, and technically feasible directions
Collaborate across organizations and time zones: Work cross-functionally with platform engineering teams, peer science orgs, and product managers to ensure alignment, resolve dependencies, and unblock progress. You'll be a key bridge between applied science innovation and product delivery
Embody our Culture and Values
Qualification
Required
Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 6+ 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 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
Preferred
Master's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 9+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research)
OR Doctorate in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 6+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research)
OR equivalent experience
4+ years experience in applied science projects from ideation to production-in high-scale environments such as search, recommendation, or conversational AI
4+ years experience in data analysis at scale, including working with logs, telemetry, and large datasets to uncover behavioral patterns, build evaluation datasets, and derive insights
5+ years experience creating publications (e.g., patents, libraries, peer-reviewed academic papers)
2+ years experience presenting at conferences or other events in the outside research/industry community as an invited speaker
5+ years experience conducting research as part of a research program (in academic or industry settings)
3+ years experience developing and deploying live production systems, as part of a product team
3+ years experience developing and deploying products or systems at multiple points in the product cycle from ideation to shipping
Experience in search and ranking systems, semantic retrieval, and information retrieval at scale
Applied experience with state-of-the-art sparse and dense retrieval and ranking techniques
Experience with RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) architectures using LLMs such as OpenAI GPT, T5, or Llama
Experience with Fine-tuning or prompt engineering of large-scale language models for query rewriting, summarization, and document reranking
Familiarity with hybrid search strategies, learning-to-rank (LTR) frameworks, and evaluation methodologies for IR systems (offline metrics, A/B testing, relevance judgments)
Company
Microsoft
Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
10001+ employees
H1B Sponsorship
Microsoft has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
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2025 (9192)
2024 (9343)
2023 (7677)
2022 (11403)
2021 (7210)
2020 (7852)
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$1MKey Investors
Technology Venture Investors
2022-12-09Post Ipo Equity
1986-03-13IPO
1981-09-01Series Unknown· $1M
Leadership Team
Satya Nadella
Chairman and CEO
Vukani Mngxati
Chief Executive Officer - Microsft South Africa
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