Senior Applied Scientist

Overview

Join the Microsoft Turing team and help shape the future of enterprise productivity with AI.

Do you want to be part of a team which delivers innovative products and machine learning solutions across Microsoft to hundreds of millions of users every month? Does the opportunity to join a fast-paced, high-visibility, diverse team in a highly competitive market sound exciting to you? If so, this Senior Applied Scientist role with the Microsoft Turing team may be a great fit for you! 

The Microsoft Turing team is an innovative applied research and engineering team working on state-of-the-art deep learning models, large language models and pioneering conversational search experiences. We build the core systems behind Microsoft 365 Copilot—a groundbreaking AI assistant used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Our work brings state-of-the-art large language models (LLMs) into production at true enterprise scale, transforming how organizations work every day.  We spearhead the platform and innovation for multiple core Copilot experiences across Microsoft’s ecosystem. 

We are a fast-growing team with a broad and evolving set of opportunities. Project assignments are shaped by your interests, experience, and strengths, allowing you to grow while working on problems that matter to you. Our collaborative feature crews tackle challenges such as:

• Developing advanced AI capabilities, including container execution and image generation.

• Building the core orchestration and runtime systems for Microsoft 365 Copilot.

• Enabling multimodal, real-time, and agentic interactions.

• Pioneering AI-driven computer and tool use at enterprise scale.

Recent launches, such as the Analyst agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot, highlight the breadth of problems we solve across the stack. The Microsoft Turing team is a unique blend of engineering and research excellence, pushing the limits of large-scale deep learning on Microsoft’s world-class distributed training infrastructure. Software engineers and applied scientists partner closely to turn cutting-edge research into production-ready systems used across the company.

This position is based in Redmond, Washington and requires the employee be in the office a minimum of 3 days per week. Domestic relocation assistance is available.

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

• You will work closely with applied scientists and engineers on designing and building both backend platform capabilities and core Copilot scenarios aimed at delighting our customers.

• You will drive projects from design through implementation, experimentation and finally shipping to our users.  

• You will own development of state-of-the-art machine learning, deep learning algorithms and techniques leveraging text, images, and video for analyzing and transforming content to build world-class AI experiences that have the potential to transform billions of people’s lives. 

• You will design and develop fundamental technologies and drive the applied research that power next-generation AI experiences.

• You will work in a diverse geographically distributed team environment where collaboration and innovation are valued. You will have an opportunity for direct impact on design, functionality, security, performance, scalability, manageability, and supportability of Microsoft products that use our deep learning technology. 

Qualifications

Required/Minimum 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.

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:

• A Bachelor’s/Master’s/Ph.D. degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering or other related technical areas (including mathematics and physics). 

• 4+ years of industrial experience coding in C++, C#, C, Java or Python.

• 4+ years of experience in applying deep learning techniques and drive end-to-end AI product development (Search, Recommendation, NLP, Document Understanding, etc). 

• 2+ years of experience with common machine learning, deep learning frameworks like Pytorch/Tensorflow.

These are other experiences and preferred qualifications that may help a person succeed in this role:

• Ability to communicate technical details clearly across organizational boundaries.  

• Solid ability and effectiveness working end-to-end in a challenging technical problem domain (plan, design, execution, continuous release, and service operation).

• Experience with shipping internet scale, low latency and high throughput systems AI products. 

• Self-driven, results oriented, high integrity, ability to work collaboratively, solve problems with groups, find win/win solutions and celebrate successes. 

• Customer/End-result/Metrics driven in design and development. 

• Keen ability and motivation to learn, enter new domains, and manage through ambiguity. 

• Solid publication track records at top conferences like ACL, EMNLP, SIGKDD, AAAI, WSDM, COLING, NIPS, ICASSP, etc.

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 $160,200 - $261,000 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. (