Principal Researcher

Microsoft is a company where passionate innovators come to collaborate, envision what can be and take their careers further. This is a world of more possibilities, more innovation, more openness, and the sky is the limit thinking in a cloud-enabled world.

Microsoft’s Azure Data engineering team is leading the transformation of analytics in the world of data with products like databases, data integration, big data analytics, messaging & real-time analytics, and business intelligence. The products our portfolio include Microsoft Fabric, Azure SQL DB, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure PostgreSQL, Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Service Bus, Azure Event Grid, and Power BI. Our mission is to build the data platform for the age of AI, powering a new class of data-first applications and driving a data culture.

Within Azure Data, the databases team builds and maintains Microsoft's operational Database systems. We store and manage data in a structured way to enable multitude of applications across various industries. We are on a journey to enable developer friendly, mission-critical, AI enabled operational Databases across relational, non-relational and OSS offerings.

Azure Cosmos DB is building AI-based information retrieval to enable search, recommendations and RAG scenarios. For example, we are building state-of-the-art systems for vector search. We are innovating both on the research (e.g., see the DiskANN project) and engineering as part of the effort. We are hiring a researcher with expertise in information retrieval, vector search, embedding models, semantic re-ranking, GraphRAG and related areas. The role would involve developing the state-of-the-art techniques in these areas, as well as advising the team on designing and building these systems.

We do not just value differences or different perspectives. We seek them out and invite them in so we can tap into the collective power of everyone in the company. As a result, our customers are better served.

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• Doctorate in relevant field AND 3+ years related-research experience
  • 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/Additional Qualifications

• Experience participating in a top conference in information retrieval, dense retrieval, vector search, embeddings, GraphRAG and related domains. Experience publishing academic papers as a lead author or essential contributor.
• Doctorate in relevant field AND 5+ years related-research experience OR equivalent experience.

Research Sciences IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $137,600 - $267,000 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 $180,400 - $294,000 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until January 1, 2025.

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• Expands collaborative relationships with product or business group leaders inside or outside Microsoft as a world expert and provides expertise or technology to them. Contributes to product or business group decisions at a strategic level by sharing input and expertise. Creates a measurable impact on the business.
• Identifies and articulates a clear long-term research agenda that is academically novel and may incorporate current or anticipated business priorities.
• Leads a collaborative research effort (possibly spanning multiple teams/Universities inside and outside of Microsoft) to advance a long-term research agenda through multiple projects, yielding new algorithms, prototypes, theories, tools, methods, analyses, insights, or collections of data in one or more subareas or a broad area of research to create societal impact.
• Serves as a top industry/academic leader and accomplished expert in a broad area of research (e.g., Machine Learning [ML], Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, Statistical Modeling) or gains unique knowledge in a specific area of research; understands the corresponding literature, applicable research techniques, and business and academic context.
• Proactively provides mentorship and coaching to less experienced and mid-level team members (e.g., interns, early-in-career researchers, senior researchers, Ph.D. candidates) by sharing expertise to build team capabilities and guiding team members in research projects and their careers. Represents Microsoft externally to grow network and attract/cultivate talent and desired capabilities. Helps to develop a capability strategy that serves long-term research objectives and attracts/cultivates talent and desired capabilities.
• Collaborates effectively with multiple research teams and researchers in other organizations to advance a long-term research agenda; acts as a major contributor to influential publications, serves on workshop and conference organizing committees, and delivers talks as an invited speaker, with an impact similar to that of a (United States) tenured associate professor.
  
  

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