Senior Applied Scientist - Machine Learning and Search Intelligence

Senior Applied Scientist

Overview

The Teams Search Intelligence Team builds largescale machine learning systems that power relevance and personalization across Microsoft Teams Search and zeroquery experiences. Affinity models learn from user engagement signals to predict relevance for people, conversations, channels, and content—helping millions of users quickly find what matters most. 

As a Senior Applied Scientist, you will design, develop, and evolve applied ML models and evaluation frameworks that directly influence ranking and discovery experiences at global scale. You will work in a fastpaced, highly collaborative environment with engineers, product managers, and partner science teams to translate stateoftheart research into reliable, productionready systems that deliver clear customer and business value. 

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.

  

Responsibilities

• Solve complex relevance and ranking problems using applied machine learning and statistical methods.
• Design, train, evaluate, and improve ML models and signals that power search and personalized discovery experiences.
• Integrate scientific methods into the product lifecycle, including offline evaluation, metric design, and online experimentation.
• Write productionquality code and apply strong debugging, validation, and reliability practices in largescale ML systems.
• Collaborate closely with software engineers, product managers, designers, and partner science teams to drive endtoend impact from research to production.
• Mentor and guide colleagues without formal research backgrounds on ML best practices, experimentation, and evaluation.
• Share learnings and results through design reviews, internal presentations, and external publications or patents where appropriate. 

Qualifications

Required/Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 6+ years related experience (e.g., statistics predictive analytics, research).
  • OR Master's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 6+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research).
  • OR Doctorate in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 4+ year(s) related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research).
  • OR equivalent experience.
• 6+ years of experience in predictive analytics, statistical modelling, or applied ML, including data preparation and evaluation.
• Experience with synthetic data generation and data management for evaluation/training. 
• Proficiency in English with solid cross functional collaboration and communication skills.

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 working with largescale, production ML systems in search, ranking, or recommendation domains.
• Exposure to large language models (LLMs) or generative AI techniques applied in practical product scenarios.
• Experience publishing peer reviewed papers or patents. 

 

 

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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.

Experience Level

Senior Level