Overview

Do you want to shape the future of the autonomous enterprise and lead the development of intelligent, agent-first experiences that transform how businesses operate? The Business and Industry Solutions (BIS) team is looking for a Senior Applied Scientist to drive innovation at the intersection of AI, experimentation, and enterprise systems. In this role, you will design and evaluate autonomous agents that deliver measurable improvements in accuracy, latency, and cost-efficiency. You’ll lead rapid experimentation cycles, develop robust evaluation frameworks, and apply advanced techniques like reinforcement learning to enable multi-step reasoning and decision-making. You’ll collaborate across engineering, product, and partner teams to ensure agents are performant, secure, reliable, and extensible—empowering customers and partners to build on our platform. This is your opportunity to influence the next generation of AI-native business applications and deliver real-world impact at scale.  

We are looking for an Applied Scientist to join our team! 

An ideal candidate has prior expertise in generative AI, software engineering skills, technical aptitude, communication skills and a collaborative working style. The scientist should focus on evaluation metrics to make purpose-built LLMs to infuse AI in productivity scenarios. Additionally, they should be comfortable with the end-to-end ML/AI solutions development process, starting from understanding the customer business problem and ending with production implementation of machine learning pipelines. As part of the role, they will also work with a globally diverse team of applied scientists and engineers who are building AI platforms, models and products. They are expected to drive growth mindset and embrace the rapidly evolving innovations and breakthroughs in this field.

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.

Responsibilities

Design, plan, and execute experiments to evaluate models, datasets, and metrics for product impact.
Define, evaluate, and assess evaluation metrics, including fairness and bias, contributing to ethical AI and privacy policies.
Document results/progress and share findings to promote innovation.
Conduct model and experimental evaluations including A/B testing, shadow testing, and other validation techniques.
Implement and fine-tune neural network architectures, including transformer-based models.
Work on frontier models to push AI innovation boundaries.
Partner with research teams to integrate cutting-edge ML technologies into products.
Collaborate with product and platform teams to design AI-powered experiences.
Build and deploy ML models, develop data pipelines, and manage training/test datasets.
Work collaboratively with cross-geo teams at flexible hours while fostering a healthy and inclusive environment.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 2+ 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 1+ year(s) related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research) OR Doctorate in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field
- OR equivalent experience.

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:

3+ years of experience working with machine learning libraries to solve real world data science problems

Skills:

Proficiency in Python, scripting, AI efficiency tools. 
Experience in large language model architectures (e.g. Transformer, etc). 
Strong foundation in classical machine learning techniques and statistics. 
Prior experience in model and experimental evaluations like A/B testing, shadow testing etc. 
Experience handling real-world noisy data. 
Demonstratable experience with software engineering principles, parallel/distributed computing, and cloud technology platforms (e.g. Azure etc.) 
Proficiency with object-oriented programming practices.

Problem-Solving: 

Ability to understand complex business contexts and solve open-ended problems.
Proactive mindset focused on optimizing solutions for business impact.

#BICJobs

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.

Applied Sciences IC3