Researcher

Come build community, explore your passions and do your best work at Microsoft. This opportunity will allow you to bring your aspirations, talent, potential - and excitement for the journey ahead.

Microsoft works with the world’s best researchers, moving with the current of technology as it rapidly evolves. Together we share the motivation to seek innovative solutions to the world’s toughest challenges and improve the lives of people everywhere. Microsoft provides a nurturing environment to support passionate researchers and engineers in AI technology innovation. We are seeking candidates excelling in deep thinking research aspects and fast-paced entrepreneurial execution. The ideal candidates should have the ability to work with researchers and product team colleagues at Microsoft to push forward research agendas, being a team player in a collaborative and supportive environment with outstanding programming skills. We are seeking candidates with research skills and technical backgrounds. Applicants should demonstrate depth of knowledge in Natural Language Understanding, Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Algorithmic Foundations of Optimization, Data Mining or Machine Intelligence (Artificial Intelligence) as well as academia experience in data processing, experimentation, and modeling.

As Researcher, you will conducts research and leads research collaborations that yield new insights, theories, analyses, data, algorithms, and/or prototypes that advance the state-of-the-art of computer science and engineering, as well as general scientific knowledge. Formulates research problems in an area of study and initiates the design, development, execution, and implementation of a research agenda to further academic knowledge and close identified gaps. Provides expertise to product or business groups and may create long-term business opportunities through research outcomes, but not responsible for addressing immediate product needs or demonstrating a clear path to product.

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. 

Required Qualifications 

• Master's Degree (or currently pursuing degree) in relevant field AND 1+ year(s) related research experience.
  • OR equivalent experience. 

Preferred Qualifications 

• Doctorate in relevant field.
  • OR equivalent experience.
• Experience in publishing academic papers as a lead author or essential contributor.
• Experience in participating in a top conference in relevant research domain.

• Collaborates with product and business groups to provide expertise and technology, participates in technology transfer, files patents, authors white papers, and develops tools/services for internal use. May publish research.
• Bridges the gap between researchers and development teams, bringing new technology and approaches into production to solve immediate product needs. Identifies and applies research-backed solutions to positively impact Microsoft products or services.
• Gains expertise in specific research subareas and broad research fields, applies advanced concepts to product needs, and consults with engineers and product teams. Researches tools and methods to improve product quality, performance, or efficiency.
• Reviews and prepares data for analysis, ensuring quality and technical constraints are met. Develops usable datasets for modeling, adapts cleaned data for machine learning, and designs ETL pipelines. Collaborates to apply state-of-the-art algorithms to business problems and uses statistical tools to evaluate machine learning models.
• Supports the application and deployment of machine learning algorithms, seeks information to improve models, and helps create, apply, and verify models through iterations. Assists with experiments and sets up monitoring to track production models.
• Documents work in progress, experimentation results, and plans to ensure processes are captured, participates in creating informal documentation, shares findings to promote innovation, and follows ethics and privacy policies when executing research processes or collecting data