Principal ML Engineer

Microsoft • Redmond, WA

4d

About The Position

Join Microsoft AI Experience’s Copilot Discover Engineering Team as a Principal ML Engineer and senior technical architect. The role is responsible for the technical direction and long-range architecture of Copilot Discover, including setting architectural vision, shaping an AI-forward discovery platform, and guiding product experiences across surfaces where Copilot appears.

The position designs and drives systems that power the Copilot Discover feed at scale. These foundational platforms ingest, enrich, rank, personalize, and serve content across web, mobile, and partner surfaces. The role leads architectural strategy for unifying signals, models, and data into coherent, trustworthy experiences; modernizing ranking and personalization; and building AI-forward infrastructure. It requires end-to-end ownership, strong product judgment, and influence across multiple teams and adjacent organizations, while ensuring MSN and Copilot Discover systems are robust, scalable, privacy-respecting, and adaptable over time.

Microsoft describes its mission as empowering every person and organization to achieve more. Employees are expected to bring a growth mindset, innovate, collaborate, and uphold respect, integrity, accountability, and inclusion.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or a related field and 8+ years of related experience; or master’s degree in one of these fields and 6+ years; or doctorate in one of these fields and 5+ years; or equivalent experience.
• Proven experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems, including data pipelines, microservices, APIs, and storage systems.
• Experience with content platforms, personalization systems, or consumer-facing services at scale.
• Experience with technologies such as Apache Spark, Kafka, columnar storage, data modeling, and schema evolution.
• Demonstrated success as a technical lead or architect, influencing across teams without direct authority.
• Proven experience and understanding of system architecture, performance tuning, telemetry design, and operational excellence.
• Exposure to ML/AI systems, especially in content understanding, ranking, or personalization.
• Excellent analytical and communication skills, including the ability to clearly articulate complex technical concepts.
• Demonstrated cross-organizational collaboration skills and ability to influence senior stakeholders.

Nice To Haves

• Master’s degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or a related field and 12+ years of related experience; or doctorate in one of these fields and 8+ years; or equivalent experience.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical direction for Copilot Discover platforms and set end-to-end architectural strategy.
• Partner with product, design, data science, and engineering leaders to translate business and user needs into executable architectural plans, documented designs, and multi-year roadmaps.
• Set and govern architectural decisions across services and teams, ensuring systems are scalable, secure, reliable, cost-efficient, and grounded in data, telemetry, and operational excellence.
• Raise the organization’s technical bar by establishing falsifiable principles, reviewing critical designs, and developing technical leaders.
• Establish and evolve quality and reliability standards, including test strategies, CI/CD practices, monitoring, alerting, and live-site health.
• Shape adoption of AI/ML techniques for content understanding, personalization, summarization, and safety in collaboration with MAI and partner teams.
• Serve as a cross-organizational technical leader, aligning MSN architecture with Bing, Copilot, Ads, Privacy, Trust, and other Microsoft platforms.

What This Job Offers

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