Senior Applied AI Engineer

Microsoft Corporation • Redmond, WA

28d

About The Position

The Business & Industry Copilots (BIC) group is a rapidly growing organization that is responsible for the Microsoft Dynamics 365 suite of products, Microsoft Copilot Studio, Power Apps, Power Automate, Dataverse, AI Builder, Microsoft Industry Solution and more. Microsoft is considered one of the leaders in Software as a Service in the world of business applications and this organization is at the heart of how business applications are designed and delivered. The BIC Agent Cloud organization at Microsoft is among the most thrilling to be a part of. BIC Agent Cloud products herald a new era of business applications that are data-initiated, AI-driven, built for collaboration, and simplify business problem-solving with low-code/no-code platforms. Our team is responsible for developing the platform for Dynamics 365 suite of business applications, and the Power Platform suite of low-code tools. We are at the vanguard of digital transformation, enabling organizations to revolutionize the creation of Copilots through state-of-the-art AI solutions and product offerings. This new productivity era leverages the power of data, AI, and productivity tools to deliver unmatched experiences across all channels. We are seeking a Senior Applied AI Engineer to join our team. This role is ideal for an individual with deep expertise in large language models (LLMs) - including both text and multimodal systems - reinforcement learning, agentic AI architectures, and large-scale model training and inference optimization. You will operate at the frontier of AI science and product innovation, driving the design and deployment of next-generation AI systems at scale. You will need to design and build systems that allow LLMs to reason over large amounts of data as well as leveraging lighter weight models in place for specific scenarios for specific scenarios. We are looking for an individual capable of working with research teams and partnering with them to deliver joint solutions.  This can range from working together on building fine-tuned models to coming up with ways to build custom LLMs for specific product needs. 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 4+ 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.
• 1+ years of experience with transformer-based models (e.g., GPT, Llama).
• 1+ years of experience in coding and design, specifically in the development of AI models for production services.
• 1+ years of experience in shipping applied research to production, combining coding skills with advanced expertise in AI model development.
• 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 Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Nice To Haves

• Master's or Ph.D in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 3+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research) or publication record in the areas of Large Language Models, Machine Learning, or Natural Language Processing.
• 2+ years of experience conducting research as part of a research program (in academic or industry settings).
• 2+ years of experience in coding and design, specifically in the development of AI models for scaled production services.
• 3+ years of experience in shipping applied research to production, highlighting a track record of combining coding skills with advanced expertise in AI model development.
• Expertise in one or more of the following: supervised learning, deep learning, natural language processing, reinforcement learning, computer vision, time series forecasting, or causal inference.
• 3+ years of experience programming with C# is preferred
• Relevant experience in Applications of Foundation Models, Domain Adaptation of Foundation Models (e.g. fine-tuning LLMs/SLMs) or Vision, Audio, and Multimodal Foundation Models or agentic Systems or Prompt Tuning or Natural Language Processing or Human-AI Interaction
• 3+ years of experience demonstrating problem solving and data analysis skills, with expertise in developing or applying predictive analytics, statistical modelling, data mining, or machine learning algorithms.
• 3+ years of experince making product impact, including state-of-the-art tools, technologies, and methods being used in the research community and product groups.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop advanced AI models and agentic systems for real-world applications.
• Own and drive end-to-end model training, including data pipeline design, distributed training optimization, and performance evaluation.
• Stay up to date with the latest advancements in LLM, NLP, deep learning, search and AI research.
• Research and develop an understanding of the state-of-the-art tools, technologies, and methods being used in the research community and product groups.  Stay current with the latest research, technologies, and best practices in AI/ML, and Translate research breakthroughs into production-ready algorithms, contributing to core capabilities such as search, planning, and long-term memory.
• Collaborate closely with engineering, product, and research teams to productionize models, build scalable, robust pipelines and provide support for in production AI Models/Agents
• Collaborate with stakeholders to define project goals, success criteria, and deliverables.  Deliver end-to-end lifecycle of machine learning models, from prototyping and implementation to evaluation, deployment, and monitoring.
• Conduct applied science experiments, create and validate metrics, develop ML pipeline and modeling algorithm in the area of Large Language Models, Natural Language Processing, Information Retrieval, and Machine Learning.
• Conduct experiments to evaluate model performance (including Large Language Models), troubleshoot issues, and iterate improvements.
• Develop and deploy conversational and language understanding models at scale.
• Following and advancing best practices for Responsible AI and Privacy Preserving Machine Learning.
• Drive AI projects through their entire life cycle from idea creation through applied research, implementation, experimentation and finally to worldwide availability.
• Embody our Culture, Values, and  Responsible AI standards

What This Job Offers

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