Research Intern - Office of Applied Research
About The Position
The Office of Applied Research at Microsoft seeks research interns to conduct state-of-the-art, impact-driven applied research that uses empirical techniques to address real-world problems. The Office brings together experts in frontier AI model development and human-centered AI to tackle challenges at scale in enterprise AI, collaborating closely with research and product partners to advance cutting-edge work aligned with Microsoft’s product interests. Interns work alongside doctoral candidates and researchers, receive mentorship, collaborate with other interns and researchers, present findings, and contribute to the research community. The internship lasts 12 weeks. Research internships are offered year-round and typically begin in the summer. Interns are expected to be physically located at their manager’s Microsoft worksite for the duration of the internship. The team is interested in candidates with research experience in areas including Generative AI, LLMs, NLP, reinforcement learning, learning from human feedback, and human-centered AI. Particular areas of interest include reinforcement learning and model mid- and post-training, continual learning, differential privacy, human-AI collaboration, and developing and evaluating enterprise AI agents, including learning from user feedback in real-world deployments.
Requirements
- Currently enrolled in a doctorate degree program in Computer Science, Information Science, Statistics, Information Systems, Economics, Operations Research, or a related STEM field.
- Must be physically located at the manager’s Microsoft worksite for the duration of the internship.
- Submit a minimum of two reference letters, a cover letter, and relevant work or research samples.
Nice To Haves
- At least 1 year of experience conducting research and writing peer-reviewed publications.
- Ability to think unconventionally and develop creative, innovative solutions.
- Actively conducting research in one or more of the following areas: collaborative or multi-party AI agents; mid- and post-training for LLMs or agents; learning from user interaction or feedback; synthetic data generation for LLM evaluation and fine-tuning; understanding, verifying, or evaluating LLM outputs; differential privacy for LLMs and data; continual learning or test-time training; agents, including memory, goal management, and inter-agent conversations; multi-agent simulations; or forward deployment for enterprise AI.
- Ability to collaborate effectively with a mentor and others at Microsoft on research projects.
- Demonstrated interpersonal and communication skills, including cross-group and cross-culture collaboration skills.
Responsibilities
- Conduct state-of-the-art applied research on real-world problems.
- Collaborate with a mentor, fellow research interns, researchers, and other Microsoft partners.
- Present research findings and contribute to the research community.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Intern
Education Level
Ph.D. or professional degree
