Principal Applied Scientist

Redmond, WA, United States

Microsoft Every company has a mission. What's ours? To empower every person and every organization to achieve more. We believe technology can and should be a force for good and that meaningful innovation contributes to a brighter world in the future and today. View company page

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.

The Microsoft Security AI Research team is responsible for defending Microsoft and our customers through applied AI innovation. 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. Defending Microsoft’s complex environment provides a unique opportunity to build and evaluate autonomous defense through emerging generative AI capabilities. Microsoft understands and learns from its own defensive expertise, including via teams like MSTIC, and has the opportunity to build a unique knowledge graph describing the relationship between risk, investigation, and response. This data, built over Microsoft’s complex digital estate, along with Microsoft AI forms the foundation for innovative solutions to defend Microsoft.

We are looking for a Principal Applied Scientist to join a newly created applied science team to reshape how we defend Microsoft. You will actively innovate by leveraging and building upon a broad set of research from Microsoft, academia, and industry to develop novel methods, tools, and frameworks for demonstrating defensive capabilities. You will collaborate with internal and external partners to apply your research to real-world scenarios and challenges. You will have the opportunity to publish your work in top-tier venues and contribute to the scientific community and the broader society. For those interested in making a meaningful impact in the security industry, don’t miss this opportunity to join the team working on the latest AI technology and applicability.

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 Conduct cutting-edge research that builds towards transformative defensive security capabilities with demonstrated scientific rigor.

Champion innovative principles and forward-looking concepts guided by research trends in academia, OSS and industry. Form strategic partnerships with thought leaders across the company, in the industry and across domains.

Work with defenders, threat hunters, PMs, and engineers to turn research into effective solutions that improve our ability to protect ourselves.

Share research findings and innovations through academic publications, open-source releases, blog posts, patents, and industry conferences.

Participate in partnerships with academia and industry to advance the state of the art in the field

Bachelor'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 Master'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 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.

Experience with any one of the following research areas: generative AI/ agentic frameworks, large language models, risk quantification, anomaly detection, clustering, statistics, time series analysis, reinforcement learning, or graph algorithms.

4+ years of experience in Python, PyTorch, TensorFlow, or other machine learning frameworks.

4+ years of relevant industry experiencedrivingcutting-edgeresearch intoreal world impact.

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:This position will be required to pass the Microsoft background and Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Preferred Qualifications:

Experience insafety andethical aspects of AI.

Experience in technology transfer of applied research.

Experience conducting high-quality research and publishing.

Experience in working with large-scale datasets.

Experience in cyber security and safety domains, such as malware detection, fraud prevention, cyber-physical systems, adversary tradecraft, emerging threats or SOC operations

Applied 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 June 28 2024.

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 requestvia 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.

#MSFTSecurity #MSECAIR #LLMS #GenerativeAI #AgenticAI #AgenticFrameworks #KnowledgeGraphs #SecurityTradecraft

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