New

Principal Applied Scientist

Microsoft
$139,900.00 - $274,800.00 / yr
United States, California, Mountain View
Feb 19, 2026
Overview Are you passionate about shaping the future applications of AI and empowering millions of users to unlock their full potential? The Notebooks team is at the forefront of an exciting transformation with Copilot Notebooks: intelligent, dynamic notebooks infused with powerful AI that act as a true "second brain." Imagine effortlessly capturing ideas, intuitively understanding complex information, and seamlessly taking informed action. This is the heart of our mission. As a Principal Applied Scientist working in Notebooks team, your core mission is to deliver high quality AI-scenarios for Copilot Notebooks. You'll be responsible for adopting the latest ML technologies, prompt tuning, measuring the impact of models with diverse Eval sets, and working with product teams to design AI-powered experiences. We are looking for candidates who are creative, self-driven, curious, people-oriented, able to mentor and comfortable defining a path through ambiguity towards high-level goals. This opportunity will allow you to work in an exciting and fast-paced environment, collaborating closely with teams across multiple organizations and ship products globally. You'll have access to the latest models, research and ML techniques that you can bring to the product teams, as well as opportunities to contribute back to the scientific community (via presentations etc). 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 Work with product teams in designing AI-powered experiences. Prompt tuning various multi-modal models to satisfy quality and latency constraints. Come up with evaluation techniques, datasets and metrics to measure the impact of the latest models on product scenarios. Collaborate with research teams to adopt the latest ML technologies into the product. Push the boundaries of AI innovation by partnering with platform teams and working with frontier models. Foster a healthy and inclusive team environment, provide technical guidance to other applied scientists, and act as a mentor. Participate in onboarding of junior team members and assist in developing academics to the members of multidiscipline teams. You'll identify new research talent to join Microsoft and collaborate with the academic community to develop the recruiting pipeline. Qualifications Required Qualifications: 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+ year(s) related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research) OR equivalent experience. 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: 5+ years of experience in machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, computer vision, prompt tuning and/or statistics. 5+ years of experience in end-to-end development for building, shipping, and iterating on high-impact ML models. Experience shipping high-quality products at scale. Proficiency in Python and familiarity with coding. Proficiency in using ML libraries from sources such as Hugging Face. Published papers in reputed ML conferences and/or contributions to open-source ML projects. 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. #CopilotNotebooks #AppliedScience #MicrosoftJobs #Notebooks Applied Sciences IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $139,900 - $274,800 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 $188,000 - $304,200 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 This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled. Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.