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Microsoft

Principal Applied Scientist

Redmond, WA; Mountain View, CA

View all 2 locations
  • Redmond, WA
  • Mountain View, CA
FULL_TIME

About the role

You will lead one or more big initiatives leveraging your expertise across a broad research landscape, including advanced research methodologies and applied techniques. You'll gain deep knowledge of a service, platform, or domain, and drive product opportunities by sharing emerging industry trends and applied technologies. You will review business requirements and incorporate research insights to meet strategic goals. You'll provide directions on the types of data and machine learning model strategies needed to solve complex problems and apply deep subject‑matter expertise to drive measurable business impact. You will support the onboarding of new team members and help develop academic collaborators into effective contributors within multidisciplinary teams. You will advance LLM post‑training and alignment techniques by designing, implementing, and evaluating novel methods that improve reasoning quality, safety, controllability, and factual grounding across large‑scale models. You will drive and develop next‑generation search capabilities by building and optimizing retrieval, ranking, and relevance systems that integrate deeply with LLM‑powered experiences. You will architect and refine RAG pipelines that enhance retrieval fidelity, reduce hallucinations, and deliver more context‑aware, user‑aligned responses in production environments. You will translate research into production by running experiments, analyzing results, and collaborating with engineering partners to deploy scalable, reliable model improvements. You will drive scientific rigor through hypothesis‑driven experimentation, reproducible methodologies, and clear documentation of findings, insights, and model behaviors. You will drive collaborate across disciplines—including research, engineering, product, and design—to shape long‑term strategy for search, alignment, and retrieval‑augmented systems. You will contribute to a culture of innovation by sharing learnings, mentoring peers, and participating in internal research discussions, reviews, and technical deep dives. Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 8+ 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 6+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research) OR Doctorate in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 5+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research) Master's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 12+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research) OR Doctorate in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 8+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research) OR equivalent experience. 6+ years of experience coding in Python, C++, C#, C or Java. 6+ year of industry experience applying Machine Learning techniques. Experience building and improving large scale Machine Learning system for search, ads, and recommendation, adopting LLM. Research background on Machine Learning, LLM and NLP. Proficient problem solver: ability to identify and solve problems that the world has not solved before.