Principal Research Scientist

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 Purview's suite of products includes data security, insider risk management, legal eDiscovery, communication compliance, and data lifecycle management, supported by Copilot for Security innovations. The Data and Applied Sciences Research team leads the way in pioneering AI and machine learning innovations, specializing in deep learning, NLP, large language models (LLMs/GPT), complex AI systems, graph models, chatbots, etc.

Our research is dedicated to pushing the boundaries of technology, anticipating future needs, and seamlessly integrating AI innovations into our product suite. We aim to deliver groundbreaking solutions that not only address current demands but also establish the groundwork for transformative advancements in data and applied sciences.

We are looking for a Principal Research Scientist to lead innovative research initiatives, transitioning them from concept to product. In this role, you will collaborate with scientists, engineers, and designers across Microsoft Security AI Research, as well as with Microsoft product teams and Microsoft Research. You’ll have the chance to develop and train cutting-edge models, advancing existing approaches to applying LLMs for security use cases, particularly in deep security research through post-training techniques. Most importantly, you'll work closely with various developer product teams to design experiments, assess results, iterate, and enhance your AI projects at scale.

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.

Responsibilities

We are seeking a Principal Research Scientist who is curious about the latest AI advancements and is willing to take on variety of challenges - from coding to model building, prompt engineering, building advanced agentic and other complex AI solutions - to join our dynamic team.

Responsibilities include:

• Design, develop, and run advanced AI/ML experiments, models, and systems.
• Initiate and advance research to advance state-of-the-art in AI for Security
• Facilitate deployment of advanced AI solutions by designing and implementing infrastructure components
• Collaborate across disciplines with product teams across Microsoft
• Stay up to date with the research literature and product advances in AI for Security

Qualifications

Required Qualifications: 

• Doctorate in relevant field AND 3+ years related research experience
  • OR equivalent experience. 
• 2+ years of experience building and training foundation LLMs.

Other Requirements:

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.

Research Sciences IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $137,600 - $267,000 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $180,400 - $294,000 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until May 6, 2025.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances.  We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.

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