Applied Scientist

Microsoft • Sunnyvale, CA

3d • $100,600 - $199,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

Core Search and AI team (Bing) is looking for people who want to build the next generation of search using advanced AI technologies, especially large language models, at scale. We are responsible for the largest machine learning models at Microsoft by volume and take pride in being the first in the world to solve many practical AI at Scale challenges. Our work spans a very large scope of scenarios to deliver high quality search results by document/answers summarization for representation and ranking, query and document understanding, and AI search grounding.
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.
Starting January 26, 2026, Microsoft AI (MAI) employees who live within a 50- mile commute of a designated Microsoft office in the U.S. or 25-mile commute of a non-U.S., country-specific location are expected to work from the office at least four days per week. This expectation is subject to local law and may vary by jurisdiction.

Requirements

• Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 2+ 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 1+ year(s) related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research)
• OR Doctorate in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field
• OR equivalent experience.

Nice To Haves

• Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 5+ 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 3+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research) OR Doctorate in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 1+ year(s) related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research) OR equivalent experience.
• 1+ year(s) experience creating publications (e.g., patents, peer-reviewed academic papers).
• Experience building and improving large scale Machine Learning system for search, ads, and recommendation.
• Research background on Machine Learning, LLM and NLP.
• Fantastic problem solver: ability to identify and solve problems that the world has not solved before.

Responsibilities

• Design, train, and improve large-scale machine learning models for Bing Search relevance and ranking, with a focus on transformer-based and LLM-powered approaches.
• Own end-to-end model development, including problem formulation, feature design, training, offline evaluation, and online A/B experimentation.
• Develop and optimize multi-stage ranking stacks (recall, coarse ranking, fine ranking) to deliver high-quality, low-latency search results at global scale.
• Leverage LLMs for query and document understanding, summarization, representation learning, and grounding to enhance ranking quality.
• Address cold-start and sparse-data challenges through content understanding, pre-training, and representation sharing.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level