Senior Applied Scientist-PowerPoint

Join the PowerPoint team as we deliver modern, intelligent, and collaborative experiences that will delight millions of PowerPoint customers. Located in the heart of Silicon Valley in Mountain View, CA, we are looking for an experienced machine learning engineer who is excited to apply ML to real-world problems and adapt LLMs to task oriented domain specific using techniques such as finetuning and reinforcement learning that will go into production.  

On our team, understanding the customer is just the beginning. We analyze customer data, understand their problems, including finetune models to address these issues, and collaborate with partner teams to deploy these models as customer-facing features. A flexible problem-solving attitude and the ability to collaborate across disciplines are vital. You will be responsible for working within Microsoft’s industry-leading commitments to user privacy and ensuring that your models and features adhere to Microsoft’s Responsible AI policies to ensure fair and unbiased experience for all.  

The PowerPoint team boasts mature development and engineering systems. Our engineers benefit from rich telemetry, data-driven decisions, rapid experimentation, and building on a world-class platform. We also have a great management team with extensive experience to help you advance your career. Our products and portfolio are rapidly expanding, and we are excited to meet the challenges of scale, performance, efficiency, and reliability as we build the world's finest storytelling software.  

We are looking for Senior ML Engineer to join our team in Mountain View, CA.  

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. In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day. 

Responsibilities

• Finetune and deploy Machine Learning (ML) models, create data pipelines, and manage training and test datasets. 
• Develop and ship machine learning models and large language model applications to customers. 
• Collaborate with research teams to adopt the latest technologies. 
• Measure the impact of models and work with product teams to design Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered experiences. 
• Foster a healthy and inclusive team environment, provide technical guidance to other engineers and applied scientists, and act as a mentor.
• Embody our culture and values

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• 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.
• 4+ years of experience in machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, computer vision, and/or statistics  
• 4+ years of experience in software development.

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.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 6+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research) OR Doctorate in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 3+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research) OR equivalent experience.
• 3+ years experience creating publications (e.g., patents, libraries, peer-reviewed academic papers).
• Experience presenting at conferences or other events in the outside research/industry community as an invited speaker.
• 3+ years experience conducting research as part of a research program (in academic or industry settings).
• 1+ year(s) experience developing and deploying live production systems, as part of a product team.
• 1+ year(s) experience developing and deploying products or systems at multiple points in the product cycle from ideation to shipping.
• 5+ years of experience in end-to-end development for building, shipping, and iterating on high-impact ML models
• Proficiency in Python and familiarity with coding in multiple languages 
• Proficiency in using ML libraries from sources such as Hugging Face
• Expertise in implementing, training, and debugging transformer-based ML models and other related tools and technologies for building and shipping large language models (LLM) applications
• Deep knowledge of algorithms, machine learning, and distributed/cloud computing systems (e.g., Spark, Hadoop, Azure)
• Contributions to open-source ML projects are a plus 
• Effective communication skills, maintaining customer experience and quality along with the ability to work across groups and disciplines
• Ability to quickly ramp up on various domains within Machine Learning 
• Experience shipping high-quality products at scale is a plus 

Applied Sciences IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $119,800 - $234,700 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 $158,400 - $258,000 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 July 7th, 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.