Senior Applied Scientist

About the role

Join the Microsoft Turing Team, a collaborative group of applied scientists and engineers pushing the frontier of large language models (LLMs) to improve the productivity of hundreds of millions of users worldwide. The team is responsible for the core systems that power Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, delivering intelligence, quality, and transformative new features. We work at the intersection of research and engineering—advancing orchestrator reasoning, training next-generation models, and shipping impactful, model-driven experiences in Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Responsibilities

• Evolve our orchestrator to reason more effectively, respond faster, and support new capabilities in multi-modality, agent-based systems, and beyond
• Advance the state of the art in model training—including post-training methods such as fine-tuning and reinforcement learning, high-quality data curation, and experimentation with frontier model training
• Build and deliver model-driven features from concept to production—spanning model development, evaluation, metrics, and A/B testing
• Master a broad area of research and understand applicable research techniques; serve as a team expert on changes in industry trends, products, and other advances, and apply this knowledge to influence product needs
• Review business and product requirements, incorporate research, and provide strategic direction for problem solving; ensure scientific rigor, support the development of methods, and apply expertise to support business impact
• Identify and inspire peers and new research talent to join Microsoft, build relationships, and advocate for research initiatives; share research findings through industry outreach, collaborate with the academic community, and help develop the recruiting pipeline
• Document work and experimentation results and share findings to promote innovation; provide guidance when capturing processes and contribute to ethics and privacy policies related to research processes and data collection

Qualifications

Required:

• Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, 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
• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements, including passing the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter

Preferred:

• 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 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)

Pay

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, where the base pay range is USD $160,200 - $261,000 per year. Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation.