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Principal Applied Scientist CoreAI

Microsoft


Job Location:

Redmond, WA - USA

Yearly Salary: USD 142800 - 274800
Posted: 6 October 2026 (2 days ago)
Application Deadline: 3 January 2027
Vacancies: 1 Vacancy

Job Summary

Overview

The CoreAI organization at Microsoft builds the end-to-end Artificial Intelligence (AI) stack and is core to Azure AI innovation and differentiation as well as all of Microsofts flagship products from GitHub to Office Teams and Xbox. We are the team building Responsible AI Azure OpenAI Model as a Service Azure Machine Learning (ML) Cognitive Services and the global Azure AI infrastructure for running the largest AI workloads on the planet.

We ensure Microsoft ships AI systems that are safe secure and trustworthyempowering every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. Our team sits at the intersection of cutting-edge AI research and planet-scale production systems powering technologies like GitHub Copilot and Azure OpenAI. We are looking for a Principal Applied Scientist to join our team!

Microsofts 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.

In alignment with our Microsoft values we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positivelyimpactour culture every day.



Responsibilities

In this role youll develop machine learning techniques that push the boundaries of safety alignment and trustworthy AI. Youll collaborate across product research and engineering teams to design build and maintain responsible AI systems that make an impact at scalefrom early-stage development and experimentation to production monitoring and continuous iteration.



Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

  • Bachelors Degree inComputer Science Computational Linguistics or related field AND 6 years related experience (e.g. statistics predictive analytics research)
    • OR Masters Degree inComputer Science Computational Linguisticsor related field AND 4 years related experience (e.g. statistics predictive analytics research)
    • OR Doctorate inComputer Science Computational Linguistics or related field AND 3 years related experience (e.g. statistics predictive analytics research)
      • 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 Qualifications:

  • Experience and familiarity with large language models (LLMs).
  • Experience with and a solid foundation in large distributed systems algorithms and software engineering principles.
  • Masters or PhD in Computer Science Machine Learning Data Science or a related field.
  • 5 years of experience in a research/ML engineering or an applied research scientist position ideally with a focus on AI safety.
  • Have hands-on experience with deep learning and transformer-based models
  • Excel at problem-solving and analytics with a proactive approach to challenges
  • Thrive in fast-moving environments where priorities shift and definitions evolve.
  • Enjoy taking ownership end-to-end and learning whatever is necessary to get results.
  • Comfortable working independently while thriving in cross-team collaborations.
  • Understand methods for training and fine-tuning LLMs including distillation supervised fine-tuning and policy optimization.

#coreai



Applied Sciences IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142800 - $274800 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 $188000 - $304200 per year.

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

Applied Sciences IC6 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $165600 - $296400 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 $220800 - $331200 per year.

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

IC