Researcher - Pretraining Data

Microsoft AI • Redmond, WA

2d • $119,800 - $304,200

About The Position

Microsoft AI is seeking a Data Researcher or Data Research Engineer to join its Pre-training team and help train frontier AI models. The role works across data and innovation with scientists, engineers, and annotators to curate, analyze, and evaluate diverse, large-scale data sources that support model development. The work focuses on research and engineering that improves models and products; academic publishing is not a priority.

The position involves designing and curating high-quality datasets, developing data collection strategies, improving dataset quality and integrity, understanding data-driven model behaviors, and aligning datasets with ethical and societal values. It also includes building scalable data pipelines and tools, evaluating datasets through experiments, and collaborating with Safety, Ethics, and Governance teams.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in AI, Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Physics, Engineering, or a related technical discipline and 4+ years of technical engineering experience coding in languages such as Python and using common data libraries such as Pandas and NumPy, or equivalent experience.
• 2+ years of experience in data analysis or data engineering, including work with large-scale unstructured or semi-structured datasets.
• Proficiency in statistics and exploratory data analysis methods.
• Ability to communicate technical findings clearly to research and product teams.

Nice To Haves

• Bachelor's degree in a relevant technical discipline and 10+ years of technical engineering experience coding in languages such as Python and using common data libraries, or equivalent experience.
• Master's degree in a relevant technical discipline and 8+ years of technical engineering experience coding in languages such as Python and using common data libraries, or equivalent experience.
• Familiarity with data processing frameworks such as Spark, Ray, or Apache Beam.

Responsibilities

• Create high-quality datasets for training and evaluation, and run data ablation experiments to assess their impact and identify effective data.
• Develop and maintain scalable pipelines for data ingestion, processing, filtering, and annotation.
• Analyze real-world datasets for quality, diversity, and 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.

What This Job Offers

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