Principal Research Scientist
About The Position
The AI Transformation team within Microsoft Frontier Company is reimagining how the company operates in the age of AI. The multidisciplinary team works across the business to transform critical end-to-end workflows by bringing people, AI agents, and systems together. Its aim is to build AI-native operating models and reusable solutions that improve how the company works and accelerate transformation at scale. The Principal Research Scientist will set research questions, build evidence, and share findings about the business and human experience of agentic transformation. Working with colleagues in design, applied AI, engineering, program leadership, and business transformation, as well as partners across the business, the role studies how agents are changing work, roles, judgment, and decision-making. Findings will inform the design of human and AI systems, agents, workflows, and operating models, and may also benefit customers and industries navigating similar changes.
Requirements
- Doctorate in a relevant field and 3 or more years of related research experience; or a master's degree in a relevant field and 4 or more years of related research experience; or a bachelor's degree in a relevant field and 6 or more years of related research experience; or equivalent experience.
Nice To Haves
- Doctorate in a relevant field and 5 or more years of related research experience; or a master's degree in a relevant field and 8 or more years of related research experience; or a bachelor's degree in a relevant field and 12 or more years of related research experience; or equivalent experience.
- Experience participating in a top conference in a relevant research domain.
Responsibilities
- Co-evolve areas of enquiry and research questions focused on the business and human experience of agentic transformation, building evidence about how AI and agents are changing work, organisations, roles, and ways of operating.
- Identify new and consequential questions as agentic ways of working evolve, using research findings to open new lines of enquiry and deepen understanding.
- Lead and conduct research into agentic transformation, shaping the approach across related studies and combining qualitative and other appropriate methods to understand behaviours, experiences, tensions, opportunities, and unintended consequences.
- Apply social and behavioural science perspectives, methodological rigour, and critical thinking throughout the research programme, guiding question framing, evidence gathering, interpretation, and conclusions.
- Develop sustained programmes of enquiry beyond individual studies, including longitudinal and comparative research where valuable.
- Build evidence on how agents shape decision quality and business outcomes, including changes in judgement, trust, and accountability that usage metrics cannot capture.
- Bring together evidence across studies to inform the design of Agentic Transformation and help teams shape interventions, challenge and test assumptions, and make decisions as technology, people, and operating models evolve.
- Build and sustain collaboration across researchers, design, engineering, strategy, industry experts, customers, and external research communities.
- Develop evidence, frameworks, and insights from Microsoft's transformation that can be shared with customers and industries navigating similar shifts in work and organisation.
- Communicate research findings clearly and responsibly to researchers, practitioners, leaders, and customers, stating the evidence's strength, limitations, and implications.
Benefits
- Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation; additional benefits and pay information is available through the link in the job posting.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Principal
