Principal Applied Scientist

Role

Microsoft seeks a Principal Applied Scientist to lead innovation at the intersection of vibe coding, low-code, and Copilot. The role drives rapid experimentation cycles, develops evaluation frameworks, and applies advanced techniques (e.g., reinforcement learning) to enable multi-step reasoning and decision-making in LLM-powered agents. You will partner with engineering, product, and partner teams to ensure agents are performant, secure, reliable, and extensible.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead research and apply applicable research techniques across a broad area, serving as a team expert on industry trends and advances.
• Design and run rapid offline and online experimentation cycles to iterate on agent behavior and performance.
• Develop robust evaluation frameworks and scientific rigor for model development and deployment.
• Apply advanced fine-tuning techniques (instruction tuning, RLHF, tool-augmented generation) to build agents capable of multi-step reasoning and decision-making.
• Integrate LLMs with external tools and APIs and implement context-aware orchestration and prompt engineering best practices.
• Provide strategic direction by reviewing business and product requirements and translating research into product impact.
• Mentor and recruit research talent; share research findings through industry outreach and academic collaboration.
• Document experimentation and results; contribute to ethics and privacy practices for research and data collection.

Qualifications

Required

• Bachelor’s degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 6+ years related experience; OR Master’s degree AND 4+ years related experience; OR Doctorate AND 3+ years related experience; OR equivalent experience.
• 5+ years experience creating publications (e.g., patents, libraries, peer-reviewed academic papers).
• Experience in NLP, LLM development, evaluation, and fine-tuning; familiarity with prompt engineering and integrating models with external tools/APIs.

Other Requirements

• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements (includes Microsoft Cloud background check on hire/transfer and every two years thereafter).

Preferred

• 2+ years presenting at conferences or industry events as an invited speaker.

Compensation

• Typical base pay range for this role across the U.S.: USD 139,900 - 274,800 per year.
• Base pay range for San Francisco Bay area and New York City metro: USD 188,000 - 304,200 per year.

Notes

• The role emphasizes research-driven development, experimentation, and delivering enterprise-scale AI-native applications. Documentation, ethics, and collaboration with academic and product teams are expected responsibilities.