Senior Applied Scientist in Cambridge

Microsoft Teams is the hub for teamwork that integrates all the people, content, and tools your team needs to be more engaged and effective. It is core to Microsoft’s modern work, modern life & modern education value proposition. We are reinventing the way people communicate and work together across the globe. We are looking to hire a Senior Applied Scientist to join the science team responsible for some of the Artificial Intelligence innovations and experiences being delivered within Microsoft Teams and related products. The team works on state-of-the-art AI models and leverages innovation in their architecture, training, fine-tuning, distillation and general design patterns to build innovative features to bring value to our customers. You will partner with research, product and engineering teams to invent and deliver the future for Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Copilot and other AI products. This role is based in Cambridge (United Kingdom).

You should apply if you are someone who:

• Has solid experience with the deep technical aspects of research and engineering in Artificial Intelligence, Language Models, Machine Learning, or Speech Recognition.
• Can communicate clearly complex technical concepts, as well as product needs and priorities.
• Thrives in an environment where people collaborate across different disciplines, teams and geographies to deliver innovation to customers.
• Can inspire without authority across teams and motivate individuals to work together towards common goals.
• Can navigate uncertainty and create clarity and focus to execute towards a common vision.

Our culture is inclusive and collaborative; our team members come from diverse backgrounds, are respectful to one another and achieve impact by building on each other’s strengths and skills. We focus our energy on AI projects that are likely to have high impact on our products and bring high value to our customers. Our team has a strong sense of bias for action and accountability and provides its members with many opportunities for learning and career growth.

Responsibilities

• Research, design, implement, adapt, train, fine tune or distil state-of-the-art multimodal models with the aim to support human communication in Teams.
• Prepare datasets, design and implement metrics and optimize model efficiency and performance.
• Collaborate closely with other groups (research, engineering and product groups) within the wider Microsoft organization, to create the next generation of AI innovation in our products and services.
• Embody Microsoft culture and values.

Qualifications

Required

• Undergraduate or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field.
• 2+ years practical ML Engineering and Python coding experience leveraging PyTorch, TensorFlow or similar framework, within large code repositories and in collaboration with additional team members.
• 2+ years’ practical experience in designing, training or fine-tuning transformer-based models or LLMs.
• 2+ years’ experience of working with language, transcription, audio or multimodal applications (e.g., combining audio and video, text and audio).
• Excellent analytical, coding, communication, and collaborative skills.

Preferred

• PhD in Computer Science, Mathematics, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field.
• Industry experience delivering real-world solutions.
• Experience with large-scale distributed training and deployment.
• Experience with reinforcement learning of language models, quantization and other model optimization techniques.
• Experience with audio (speech to speech) foundation models, multimodal conversational models.
• Experience with AML/ADO pipelines and CI tools.
• System development skills spanning rapid prototypes to production systems with complex dependencies.
• A track record of innovation in AI evidenced by scientific publications, patents or contributions to product features.

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.