Principal Applied Science Manager Foundation Models, Agents & Trust Systems

About the Role

Microsoft Advertising serves ads across search native display video commerce and emerging AI-powered experiences. Protecting these ecosystems requires decision systems that can understand advertisers content behavior intent landing pages identities and marketplace activity across every modality.

We are seeking a Principal Applied Science Manager to lead the science organization responsible for risk editorial quality moderation policy enforcement and Responsible AI across Microsoft Advertising.

The team will build the next generation of intelligent decision systems including:

• Foundation models for advertiser behavior and risk.
• Foundation moderation models spanning text image video and multimodal experiences.
• Deep-research agents that investigate complex cases gather evidence reason across signals and assist automated and human decision-making.
• Tiered enforcement systems that select the right model workflow and level of review based on risk severity confidence latency and cost.
• Human-in-the-loop that combine advanced AI capabilities with expert judgment and accountability.
• Continuous evaluation and audit systems that measure quality fairness safety robustness and business impact.

This role owns both scientific direction and production impact of the science. The successful candidate will define the long-term strategy build and lead a strong science team and work closely with engineering product platform policy review operations and partner organizations to ship these capabilities across all Microsoft Ads products.

The role is ideal for a leader who can operate across multiple horizons: delivering measurable improvements today while shaping the future of Responsible AI trust and safety and intelligent enforcement systems.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the multi-year science strategy for risk editorial quality moderation policy enforcement and Responsible AI across Microsoft Advertising.
• Build lead and grow a high-performing team of applied scientists working across foundation models multimodal understanding behavior modeling agentic systems etc
• Development foundation behavior models that understand advertisers accounts domains identities payments content and activity over time.
• Develop foundation moderation models that generalize across policies products languages markets and modalities.
• Build Deep Research agents that can investigate complex cases retrieve and assess evidence reason across multiple signals identify contradictions and support high-quality decisions.
• Design tiered enforcement architectures that combine lightweight classifiers specialized models foundation models agents deterministic systems and human review.
• Determine when decisions should be automated escalated to advanced models or agents or routed to expert human reviewers.
• Establish scientific foundations for risk scoring severity estimation uncertainty calibration explainability and cost-sensitive decision-making.
• Drive measurable improvements in user safety marketplace integrity advertiser experience decision quality operational efficiency and revenue protection.
• Evolve scientific and engineering approaches as Responsible AI expectations adversarial behaviors policies and model capabilities change.
• Work across product management platform engineering review operations policy legal privacy Responsible AI and partner science organizations
• Influence senior leaders on scientific strategy platform architecture organizational investments technical priorities
• Mentor senior scientists and managers raise scientific standards and build the next generation of applied-science leadership.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science Statistics Electrical Engineering Computer Engineering or a related field and 15 years of relevant experience;
  or a Masters degree and 12 years of relevant experience;
  or a Doctorate and 10 years of relevant experience;
  or equivalent experience.
• Demonstrated experience leading applied-science or machine-learning teams and developing senior technical talent.
• Proven track record of defining scientific and product strategy and translating it into large-scale production capabilities with measurable customer business and operational impact.
• Ability to make complex product and technical trade-offs across quality coverage latency cost explainability safety and speed of delivery.
• Deep expertise in one or more of the following:
• Foundation models and large-scale representation learning.
• Fraud abuse risk trust and safety or cybersecurity.
• Content moderation editorial quality or policy enforcement.
• Multimodal understanding across text image video audio and web content.
• Agentic systems retrieval reasoning and evidence-based decision systems.
• Large-scale classification ranking recommendation or decision systems.

• Experience leading complex initiatives across engineering product operations policy and partner science organizations.
• Ability to lead the productionization of complex machine-learning systems including data and labeling strategy experimentation model evaluation deployment architecture observability reliability latency capacity cost and operational readiness.
• Ability to connect scientific advances with product requirements operational workflows engineering constraints and business outcomes.
• Demonstrated ability to operate effectively in ambiguous and rapidly changing technical regulatory and Responsible AI environments.
• Strong communication and executive-influence skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building foundation models for behavior understanding moderation risk or trust and safety.
• Experience with agentic systems tool-using agents deep-research workflows retrieval structured reasoning and evidence-based decision systems.
• Experience designing multi-stage or tiered model architectures that balance accuracy latency coverage and cost.
• Background in advertising search commerce recommendations financial risk cybersecurity or another high-scale marketplace domain.

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age ancestry citizenship color family or medical care leave gender identity or expression genetic information immigration status marital status medical condition national origin physical or mental disability political affiliation protected veteran or military status race ethnicity religion sex (including pregnancy) sexual orientation or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process read more about requesting accommodations.

Required Experience:

Manager