Senior Applied Scientist

Microsoft is a company where passionate innovators come to collaborate, envision what can be and take their careers to levels they cannot achieve anywhere else. This is a world of more possibilities, more innovation, more openness in a cloud-enabled world. The Business & Industry Copilots group is a rapidly growing organization that is responsible for the Microsoft Dynamics 365 suite of products, Power Apps, Power Automate, Dataverse, AI Builder, Microsoft Industry Solution and more. Microsoft is considered one of the leaders in Software as a Service in the world of business applications and this organization is at the heart of how business applications are designed and delivered.

We are looking for a Senior Applied Scientist to join our team!

This is an exciting time to join our group and work on something highly strategic to Microsoft in shaping 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.

The ideal candidate has prior expertise in natural language processing (NLP), with a strong foundation in large language model (LLM) development, evaluation, and fine-tuning. They should have hands-on experience in applying advanced fine-tuning techniques—including instruction tuning, reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), and tool-augmented generation—to build agents capable of multi-step reasoning and decision-making. Familiarity with prompt/context engineering, context-aware orchestration, and integrating LLMs with external tools and APIs is essential. The candidate should be comfortable working in a fast-paced, experimentation-driven environment, leveraging both offline and online evaluation methods to iterate rapidly and optimize agent behavior. A deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities in building AI-native enterprise applications will be key to success in this role.

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.

• Deliver impactful solutions by executing high‑leverage data science and analytics initiatives within a product area or feature team, ensuring measurable improvements to user and business outcomes.
• Lead the design and implementation of advanced model fine‑tuning pipelines, including Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), to align AI system behavior with user intent and improve performance in real‑world scenarios.
• Own complex, end‑to‑end projects that combine technical depth with cross‑functional collaboration, influencing feature direction and prioritization rather than broad organizational investment decisions.
• Foster alignment and trust across partner teams through clear, actionable communication and collaborative problem‑solving.
• Develop and maintain robust measurement systems, experimentation frameworks, and causal inference methodologies tailored to dynamic AI systems and enterprise‑scale environments.
• Mentor and support peers by sharing best practices, reviewing designs, and contributing to a collaborative, high‑performance team culture.
• Leverage AI to streamline workflows and enhance team productivity through intelligent automation and innovation.

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+ 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:

• Bachelor'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 Master'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 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.
• 3+ years experience creating publications (e.g., patents, libraries, peer-reviewed academic papers).
• Experience presenting at conferences or other events in the outside research/industry community as an invited speaker.
• 3+ years experience conducting research as part of a research program (in academic or industry settings).
• 1+ year(s) experience developing and deploying products or systems at multiple points in the product cycle from ideation to shipping.

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