Applied Scientist: Opportunities - PhD - Microsoft AI Development Acceleration Program, Cambridge

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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 is dedicated to transforming Azure into a global AI supercomputer, enabling the responsible development of cutting-edge foundational AI. This includes large language models (LLMs) designed to empower people to harness the world's knowledge, revolutionize interactions with technology, and enhance user experiences.

To solidify our leadership in AI, Microsoft has launched a groundbreaking program to develop the next generation of leaders in this field. Over the course of two years, participants will work in interdisciplinary project teams to provide AI as a service to engineering teams across Microsoft and solve some of our most exciting and challenging problems. In addition, you will have mentors, exposure to leaders, and access to numerous AI applied scientists, researchers, and engineers across the company. After completing the program, participants have the opportunity to join one of the sponsoring product teams and further accelerate their careers at Microsoft.

MAIDAP (Microsoft AI Development Acceleration Program) Applied Scientists have the opportunity to leverage or instantiate novel AI technology into production by advancing the state-of-the-art internally and externally to address product needs and acting as the “and” in research and development (R&D) by blending techniques of both researchers and development teams to drive data-driven research-baked innovation from theory into reality, in collaboration with software engineers and product managers in MAIDAP and partnering product and technology teams across Microsoft.

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.

Please note that this position has a single start date in July 2025, candidates must be available to start full-time in July 2025. Unfortunately, we cannot accommodate earlier start dates.

Required Qualifications:

• Doctorate (or currently pursing a degree) in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field.
• Candidates must be available to start full-time in July 2025.

Preferred Qualifications:

• A publication record in any of the following or related modeling paradigms: LLMs/SLMs/multi-modal models/probabilistic graphical models/Bayesian networks/deep learning/reinforcement learning/time series/active learning/fair and interpretable AI/optimization for machine learning.
• Experience in any of the deep learning frameworks.
• 2+ years experience and proven knowledge in Python/R/Scala or similar.
• Application experience in language, speech, vision, graphics, gaming, recommendation.
• Ssystems, or other big-data applications a bonus.
• Proficient written and oral communication skills.
• Energized by creating AI solutions that can positively impact the work and lives of millions of people.
• Passion for data-driven learning.
• Excited by the prospect of working on a wide variety of datasets and AI applications, across many products and engineering teams.
• Believe that AI is a team sport.
• Enjoy being an active member of a diverse and inclusive cohort.

Applied Sciences IC3 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $98,300 - $193,200 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 $127,200 - $208,800 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

Microsoft will accept applications and processes offers for these roles on an ongoing basis.

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• Research, develop, and lead the implementation of AI solutions in application projects for Microsoft’s products and services.
• Select and apply appropriate statistical and machine learning techniques to large-scale, high-dimensional data.
• Stay current with the latest research and technology and communicate your knowledge throughout the organization.
• Take responsibility for preparing data for analysis, review data preparation/ETL code and provide critical feedback on issues of data integrity.
• Share knowledge by clearly articulating results and ideas to customers, managers, and key decision makers.
• Patent and publish relevant IP and scientific research.
• Up to 10% travel may be required.