Principal Applied Scientist

• Advance research and development across retrieval, ranking, matching, and generative models.
• Leverage and improve SLMs/LLMs train, fine-tune, and align models and productionize them.
• Evolve the Ads ranking platform toward better usability, reliability, scalability, efficiency, and architectural coherence.
• Provide technical leadership on projects: set direction, coach a distributed team, and influence cross-org strategy.
• Follow research trends in AI to guide the group keep solutions state-of-the-art. - Collaborate with research and engineering teams.

Required/Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelors 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 Masters 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.

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:

• Masters 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).
  • OR equivalent experience. 
• Experience designing and scaling recommendation systems with massive query/item spaces and multi-stage ranking pipelines. 
• Proven ability to influence platform architecture and align cross-team roadmaps.
• Track record of publications in tier-1 venues such as NeurIPS, ICML, KDD, WWW, ACL, SIGIR.
• 8+ years of experience in ML with a proven record of shipping large-scale models to production. Hands-on experience with SLM/LLM training, fine-tuning, and post-training.
• Proficiency with deep learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, Hugging Face, TensorFlow) and distributed training on large datasets.

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.