Member of Technical Staff, Copilot Prompt Engineer
Job Summary
Job Description
This role involves designing and developing prompting techniques for emotional and intellectual AI use cases. The Prompt Engineer will establish frameworks for AI companions to navigate complex social and ethical situations, create evaluations to measure AI performance (both technical and emotional), and teach others prompting techniques. The ideal candidate will have experience with large language models, a user-centric approach, and strong written communication skills. They will also research and implement novel prompting techniques, working closely with design and leadership teams to shape the core user experience. The position requires a Bachelor's degree and 4+ years of relevant experience, with a focus on creating empathetic and kind AI companions.
Must have:
- Chain-of-thought prompting experience
- Novel prompting discovery and scaled implementation
- Robust evaluation frameworks for AI behavior
- User-centric approach to prompting
- Excellent written communication
Good to have:
- Conversation or product design experience
- Experience with personalization systems
- Adversarial prompting experience
5 skills required
Job Details
Job Description
Overview
Hello future teammate! We're on quite the bold mission; we're building an AI companion that's truly empathetic, kind, and equal partners to our users. This isn't an assistant—it's thoughtful collaborator that grows alongside the people they serve. We believe AI should elevate human potential through genuine connection and mutual understanding.
You'll join our small and nimble team as a Prompt Engineer, the architect of these relationships. You'll craft the foundations that enable meaningful human-AI partnerships. You'll shape how our companions think, respond, and evolve through language—if you'll allow slight anthropomorphizing, teach them how to be their best selves. You're somewhat of a designer, somewhat of an engineer, and somewhat of a mad scientist. You'll work intimately with the design and leadership team—because this is the product!—you're designing the core of the experience.
This isn't just engineering—it's a profound exploration of what connection can mean in the age of artificial intelligence. No big deal. Just another Tuesday.
What we are looking for:
- Chain-of-thought experience: prompting techniques that guide AI systems through reasoning processes
- A novel prompting discovery: a really interesting challenge that you've solved in a creative way
- Scaled implementation: you've shipping prompted systems that work reliably at production scale with diverse user populations
- Evaluation design: you've built robust testing frameworks to measure AI behavior against goals
- User-centric approach: Proven understanding of how prompting decisions impact the lived experience of people who interact with AI
- Effective written communication skills: able to convey complex information clearly, concisely, and effectively for various audiences
- Comfort with ambiguity in an exponentially growing space
Why us
AIs can do anything. Given the right product focus and talent, AIs can do anything. We're a humble but incredibly talented end-to-end team—we pretrain models, we fine-tune, we evaluate, and we ship Copilot to all consumers of the world. We find ourselves in this beautiful moment in time. You have a profound opportunity to influence the world for the better. AI is not just about being intellectual, it's about getting people to a new place in their life—elevating, bettering, supporting, empowering. Really understanding. And seeing someone whole. That's our focus. Does that resonate with you?
By applying to this U.S. Redmond, WA position, you are required to be local to the Seattle area and in office 3 days a week.
Responsibilities
- Design & develop prompting techniques for emotional and intellectual use cases
- Establish frameworks for AI companions to navigate complex social and ethical situations with nuance and care
- Create evaluations to measure both technical/practical performance and non-deterministic performance like EQ
- Teach others prompting techniques and ways-of-working to elevate the prompting skill throughout the team
- Research & implement novel prompting techniques
- Embody our
Required/Minimum Qualifications (RQs/MQs)
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Philosophy, Linguistics, Psychology, Literature, or related discipline AND 4 years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C , C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
- OR equivalent experience.
- 2 years of experience with large language models.
Additional or Preferred Qualifications (PQs)
- An understanding of conversation design or product design.
- Familiarity with both quantitative metrics and qualitative assessment methods.
- Experience with personalization systems that adapt to individual user needs.
- Adversarial prompting experience or conducted some unhinged experiments.
Software Engineering IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $117,200 - $229,200 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 $153,600 - $250,200 per year.
Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
Microsoft will accept applications and processes offers for these roles on an ongoing basis.
#MicrosoftAI #Copilot
Similar Jobs
Nielsen Holdings
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India (Hybrid)
• 5 Months ago
Glean
Palo Alto, California, United States (On-Site)
• 5 Months ago
Netflix
Los Gatos, California, United States (On-Site)
• 2 Months ago
Get notifed when new similar jobs are uploaded
Similar Skill Jobs
ByteDance
San Jose, California, United States (On-Site)
• 3 Weeks ago
ByteDance
San Jose, California, United States (On-Site)
• 1 Day ago
ByteDance
San Jose, California, United States (On-Site)
• 3 Weeks ago
Next Level Business Services
San Diego, California, United States (On-Site)
• 5 Months ago
ByteDance
San Jose, California, United States (On-Site)
• 2 Months ago
Get notifed when new similar jobs are uploaded
Jobs in Redmond, Washington, United States
ByteDance
Seattle, Washington, United States (On-Site)
• 5 Months ago
Meta
San Francisco, California, United States (On-Site)
• 5 Months ago
Nintendo
Redmond, Washington, United States (Hybrid)
• 4 Months ago
Get notifed when new similar jobs are uploaded
Similar Category Jobs
Looks like we're out of matches
Set up an alert and we'll send you similar jobs the moment they appear!
About The Company
Microsoft is a tech giant that develops, licenses, and supports a range of software products, services, and devices.
Get notified when new jobs are added by Microsoft
