Applied Scientist - LLM

At Microsoft, we understand the importance of breaking down language barriers to better serve our global customers. Our Experiences and Devices localization engineering team is fully committed to this mission and our critical role in modernizing localization and internationalization platforms. Our goal is to empower partners to build products for international markets and enable Microsoft to move faster in delighting billions of customers worldwide.

The E+D localization team at Microsoft is seeking a motivated and talented Applied Scientist to join our team and help build the next generation localization pipeline, including cutting-edge machine translation systems and language quality prediction and estimation models using innovative Deep Learning and Generative AI technologies.

This position offers an outstanding opportunity to be part of a multi-discipline team that enables and empowers Microsoft customers with delightful and world-class experiences, while maintaining a diverse, agile, and supportive team environment.

As part of the team, you will be building end-to-end ML/AI powered features through their entire life cycle from idea creation through implementation, experimentation and finally to worldwide availability in partnership with our engineering teams. The right candidate will have a strong passion for innovation, deep learning, language technology and passion for delighting users through building quality international experiences. Experience in leveraging LLMs beyond prompt engineering, Retrieval Augmented Generation, model fine-tuning and Agentic workflows, would be a distinct advantage.

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

• Investigate, design, prototype, test, validate and deliver machine learning/AI localization features using best in class technologies and frameworks.
• Collaborate with multiple disciplines: Product Managers, Applied & Data Scientists, Software Engineers, and partner teams to deliver and contribute to solutions.
• Leverage Azure services (e.g., Azure ML, Azure DevOps, Azure Data Factory) and develop customized modules to instrument MLOps to monitor, adjust and improve our services.
• Support and manage machine learning models, production pipeline, and experimentation platform, contributing to all stages of model development, deployment and monitoring.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications: 

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Math, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related field AND experience in business analytics, data science, data modeling or data engineering work
  • OR Master's Degree in Computer Science, Math, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related field
  • OR equivalent experience.
• Expertise in various ML frameworks and libraries (Scikit-learn, PyTorch/TensorFlow, Azure ML, OpenAI, HuggingFace).

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: 

• Fluency with recent NLP & ML advancements e.g. large language models, as well as a driven passion for discovering the next generation of technology.
• Experience working on Machine Translation or language-related tasks would offer a distinct advantage.
  
• Excellent knowledge of experimental design and evaluation.
  
• Experience working in a technical problem domain (plan, design, execution, continuous release, and service operation).
  
• Excellent research skills and experience in bringing cutting-edge research ideas into production to deliver business impact.
  
• Proven track record of shipping Machine Learning/AI features.
  
• Excellent communication skills, inter-personal & collaboration skills.
• Proficiency with large data sets (structured and unstructured), relational databases, database-design and ELT.

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. 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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