Research AI Engineer II

Microsoft Corporation • Redmond, WA

37d

About The Position

Security represents the most critical priorities for our customers in a world awash in digital threats, regulatory scrutiny, and estate complexity. Microsoft Security aspires to make the world a safer place for all. We want to reshape security and empower every user, customer, and developer with a security cloud that protects them with end to end, simplified solutions. The Microsoft Security organization accelerates Microsoft's mission and bold ambitions to ensure that our company and industry is securing digital technology platforms, devices, and clouds in our customers' heterogeneous environments, as well as ensuring the security of our own internal estate. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world. 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.

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.
• 2+ years of hands-on experience building and deploying production-grade AI systems using Python, PyTorch, or TensorFlow. - Proficiency in large language models (LLMs), embeddings, vector databases, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) architectures.
• Understanding of identity and security concepts, including authentication, access control, detection signals, and risk-based decisioning. - Experience with prompt engineering, tool-augmented reasoning, and multi-agent frameworks for autonomous or task-oriented AI workflows.
• 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 background and Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

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.
• Experience with Azure AI Foundry, OpenAI APIs, or Semantic Kernel for enterprise-scale AI development. - Familiarity with Microsoft Security offerings, such as Entra ID, Microsoft Defender, MDE, or MDI, and their associated risk and protection ecosystems.
• Knowledge of MCP (Model Context Protocol) or other interoperable agent architectures for secure model orchestration. - Understanding of AI safety, governance, and content moderation principles in security or enterprise environments.

Responsibilities

• Design and build GenAI-powered Security Agents that enable enterprise customers to understand, investigate, and mitigate identity risks across Entra ID - including Identity Protection, Conditional Access, and related products.
• Reimagine and modernize traditional security workflows (e.g., detection development, validation, triage, and investigation) through intelligent automation, multi-agent orchestration, and reasoning-driven LLM systems.
• Develop secure, scalable AI pipelines and MCP-based services that integrate identity signals, risk data, and detection outputs across the broader Microsoft Security ecosystem. - Prototype, evaluate, and deploy advanced agentic capabilities - such as retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), multi-agent framework, MCP servers, context engineering, and long-term agent memory - to support next-generation GenAI security agents.
• Collaborate with Microsoft Research and partner teams to drive model and signal exchange through the Agent-to-Agent (A2A) framework, enabling unified, cross-product intelligence for security-focused AI agents across Microsoft Security.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Industry: Publishing Industries
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees