Senior Applied Scientist

Join the Collab Services team at Microsoft as we are building Agents and Copilot Skills to delight the collaboration experience for millions of Office 365 customers. Our team is building the Collab Agent for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to help users better collaborate on documents, tackling scenarios from assisting with comment resolutions to providing proactive suggestions and autonomous help. We're excited to apply cutting-edge AI and machine learning to real-world collaboration problems, building models that will go into production and transform how people work together. 

On our team, understanding the customer is just the beginning. We analyze customer data, understand their problems, build models to address these issues, and collaborate with partner teams to deploy these models as customer-facing features. A flexible problem-solving attitude and the ability to collaborate across disciplines are vital. You will be responsible for working within Microsoft's industry-leading commitments to user privacy and ensuring that your models and features adhere to Microsoft's Responsible AI policies to ensure fair and unbiased models for all.   

On the Collab Services team, our engineers benefit from data-driven decisions, rapid experimentation, and robust telemetry, allowing us to iterate quickly and verify the impact of new ideas. We have a supportive management team with extensive experience to help you advance your career. As our product's scope and portfolio rapidly expand, we are excited to meet the challenges of scale, performance, efficiency, and reliability in building the world's best collaborative document experience. 

We are looking for a Senior Applied Scientist to join our team and help drive these efforts. (Location: Redmond, WA) 

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.

• Build and deploy Machine Learning (ML) models, create data pipelines, and manage training and test datasets.  
• Develop and ship machine learning models and large language model applications to customers.  
• Collaborate with research teams to adopt the latest technologies.  
• Measure the impact of models and work with product teams to design Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered experiences.  
• Foster a healthy and inclusive team environment, provide technical guidance to other applied scientists, and act as a mentor. 

Required Qualifications: 

• Bachelor'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 Master's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 3+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research) 
  • OR Doctorate in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 1+ year(s) related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research) 
  • OR equivalent experience 
• 4+ years of experience in machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, computer vision, and/or statistics. 
• 4+ years of experience in software development.
• 2+ years of industry experience on a Applied Scientist role.

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.

Preferred Qualifications: 

• 5+ years of experience in end-to-end development for building, shipping, and iterating on high-impact ML models. 
• Proficiency in Python and familiarity with coding in multiple languages.  
• Proficiency in using ML libraries from sources such as Hugging Face. 
• Expertise in implementing, training, and debugging transformer-based ML models and other related tools and technologies for building and shipping large language models (LLM) applications. 
• Deep knowledge of algorithms, machine learning, and distributed/cloud computing systems (e.g., Spark, Hadoop, Azure). 
• Published papers in reputed ML conferences are a plus.  
• Contributions to open-source ML projects are a big plus.  
• Effective communication skills, maintaining customer experience and quality along with the ability to work across groups and disciplines. 
• Ability to quickly ramp up on various domains within Machine Learning.  
• Experience shipping high-quality products at scale is a plus.

Applied Sciences IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $119,800 - $234,700 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $158,400 - $258,000 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:

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.