The Principal Applied Scientist role focuses on defining, evaluating, and building AI-powered product experiences. This position requires a leader with expertise in large language models, evaluation systems, and software engineering, who can drive the development and improvement of AI capabilities. The ideal candidate will have experience in building AI-based products from inception to launch, ensuring high-quality solutions that meet customer and business needs. The role emphasizes collaboration with engineering and product management to align scientific priorities with product strategy.

• Bachelor's Degree in a relevant field and 6+ years of related experience, or a Master's Degree with 4+ years of experience, or a Doctorate with 3+ years of experience.
• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer, and/or government security screening requirements.
• 5+ years of experience creating publications, such as patents or peer-reviewed papers.
• 3+ years of experience developing and deploying live production systems.
• Significant experience building, evaluating, and shipping AI/ML-powered products or services.

• Lead applied science strategy for AI-powered product areas from opportunity identification through to continuous improvement.
• Define success metrics for AI product experiences, including customer value and measurable business impact.
• Design and operationalize LLM evaluation frameworks across the product development lifecycle.
• Build evaluation methodologies for various AI systems, including multimodal experiences.
• Develop robust offline experimentation and evaluation pipelines to compare models and system designs.

• Employees at Microsoft are often offered comprehensive, “world-class” benefits—including health and mental-wellness programs, competitive pay with bonuses and stock awards, and retirement/savings options. Time-off and flexibility are common, with generous vacation and holidays, parental and caregiver leave, and flexible work schedules, alongside learning support, employee resource groups, product discounts, and matching-gifts/volunteering programs. Specific benefits can vary by region.