Data Research Engineer

Microsoft•,

177d•$119,800 - $304,200•Hybrid

About The Position

We are seeking Data Research Engineers to join our Multimodal team, where we are building the next generation of foundation models across vision, language, audio, and beyond. If you are passionate about designing and curating high-quality datasets to power frontier AI models, this role is for you. In this role, you’ll work at the intersection of data and innovation—collaborating with scientists, engineers, and annotators to curate, analyze, and evaluate diverse multimodal data sources critical to model development. You will lead efforts to: Develop novel data collection strategies, Improve dataset quality and integrity, Understand data-driven model behaviors, Align datasets with ethical and societal values. This is a cross-disciplinary, high-impact role ideal for engineers who want to push the boundaries of what AI can learn from data, especially in multimodal contexts. This role is part of Microsoft AI's Superintelligence Team. The MAIST is a startup-like team inside Microsoft AI, created to push the boundaries of AI toward Humanist Superintelligence—ultra-capable systems that remain controllable, safety-aligned, and anchored to human values. Our mission is to create AI that amplifies human potential while ensuring humanity remains firmly in control. We aim to deliver breakthroughs that benefit society—advancing science, education, and global well-being. We’re also fortunate to partner with incredible product teams giving our models the chance to reach billions of users and create immense positive impact. If you’re a brilliant, highly-ambitious and low ego individual, you’ll fit right in—come and join us as we work on our next generation of models!

Requirements

Bachelor's Degree in AI, Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Physics, Engineering, or related technical discipline AND 4+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, Python and common data libraries (Pandas, NumPy, etc.) OR equivalent experience.

Nice To Haves

Master's Degree in in AI, Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Physics, Engineering, or related technical discipline AND 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, Python and common data libraries (Pandas, NumPy, etc.) OR Bachelor's Degree in AI, Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Physics, Engineering, or related technical discipline AND 12+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, Python and common data libraries (Pandas, NumPy, etc.) OR equivalent experience.
2+ years of experience in data analysis or data engineering, including work with large-scale datasets that are unstructured or semi-structured.
Proficiency in statistics and exploratory data analysis methods.
Familiarity with data processing frameworks such as Spark, Ray, or Apache Beam.
Ability to communicate technical findings clearly to research and product teams.

Responsibilities

Create high-quality datasets for training and evaluation; run experiments on new datasets (data ablations) to assess their impact and determine the most effective data.
Develop and maintain scalable data pipelines for multimodal ingestion, preprocessing, filtering, and annotation.
Analyze real-world multimodal datasets to assess quality, diversity, relevance, and identify areas for improvement.
Build lightweight tools and workflows for dataset auditing, visualization, and versioning.
Collaborate with Safety, Ethics, and Governance teams to ensure datasets meet standards for quality, privacy, and responsible AI practices.
Embody our culture and values.