Applied Scientist

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.

Welcome to the Applied Research arm of Microsoft Security AI Research (MSECAIR), where we engage in research to create truly differentiating products and services across Microsoft's Security Division. In the 18 months since our organization's founding, we have driven the research behind Microsoft Security Copilot and a suite of both foundational and specialized AI models. Our project portfolio includes a variety of short-to-long-term horizon projects with applications across Microsoft's security suite. We are a culture-first organization, and our culture is one of ambition and science together with curiosity and humility. We believe in a future that is brighter and better than the present, and we want to be the ones who make it happen. We believe that customer obsession requires a commitment to investing in new knowledge. Our people are some of the brightest scientists and engineers in the world, and we collaborate every day, helping each other grow and break boundaries. But we do this with the humility that comes with the immense challenges of providing cybersecurity to millions of customers. We oversee and coordinate AI investments for Microsoft Security; work with engineering partners to accelerate and scale security research by making AI tools and data more accessible to security researchers; serve as Microsoft Security's central hub for industry and academic partnerships; and drive thought leadership efforts to let the world know about our trailblazing work in security science and AI.

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.

Qualifications

Required qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND relevant internship experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research)
  • OR Master's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field
  • OR equivalent experience.

Preferred qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 2+ 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 OR equivalent experience

Applied Sciences IC2 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $81,900 - $160,200 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 $105,600 - $174,600 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until November 5, 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 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.

#MSECAIR #MSFTSecurity #AutonomousAI

Responsibilities

Ethics and Privacy

• Understands and follows ethics and privacy policies when executing research processes and/or collecting data/information.
• Bringing the State of the Art to Products Under guidance from others, learns to communicate with key product stakeholders (e.g., researchers, engineers, designers, development teams) and understand functions and goals of different teams.
• Following instructions from others, works on a component of a product to create impact. Identifies approach, and applies, improves, or creates a research-backed solution (e.g., novel, data driven, scalable, extendable) for technique/technology to complete a given task.
• May publish research to promote receiving new intellectual property for product impact.
• Gains an understanding of the latest research related to Microsoft products or business groups and assists in technology transfer attempts, contributing to patents, co-authoring white papers, developing or maintaining tools/services for internal Microsoft use, or consulting for product or business groups.
• May publish research to promote receiving new intellectual property for business impact. responsibility description

Capability Management and Networking

• Maintains or develops ties with external network of peers and identifies prospective talent for Microsoft research pipelines, when asked.
• May contribute to publications on research findings.
• May participate in candidate interviews.
• Reinforces a positive environment by learning and adopting best practices.

Machine Learning Functionality, Insights, and Technical Tools

• Prepares data to be used for analysis by reviewing criteria that reflect quality and technical constraints. Reviews data and suggests data to be included and excluded.
• Describes actions taken to address data quality problems.
• Assists with the development of useable datasets for modeling purposes.
• Supports the scaling of feature ideation and data preparation.
• Helps take cleaned data and adapts for machine learning purposes, under the direction of a senior team member.
• Seeks guidance from senior team members when confronted with problems/challenges.
• Modifies existing machine learning/data extract, transform, and load (ETL) pipelines (e.g., data collection, cleaning) under the direction of a senior team member.
• Supports the application and use of intelligence created during the training of algorithms for deployment under the direction of senior team members.
• Reacts to monitors going off and starts initial investigation into issue. Learns to collaborate with others to leverage data to identify pockets of opportunity to apply statistical analysis to improve a solution to a business problem.
• Uses statistical analysis tools for evaluating Machine Learning models and validating assumptions about the data while also reviewing consistency against other sources.
• Assists with running basic descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive statistics. Assists with the communication of insights under the direction of senior team members.
• Uses and improves upon machine learning fundamentals that structures, analyzes, and uses data in product and platforms to train algorithms for scalable artificial intelligence solutions before deploying.
• Ensures the data is mapped correctly to a specific machine learning method while under the direction of a senior team member.

Documentation

• Assists with documentation for senior team members as requested.
• Participates in the creation of informal documentation.

Leveraging Applied Research

• Develops basic knowledge of changes in industry trends and advances in applied technologies.
• Shares knowledge with immediate team members.
• Learns product domain by reviewing products.
• Gains a basic understanding of a broad area of research (e.g., Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, Statistical Modeling, Data-Driven Insights, etc.

Employers have access to artificial intelligence language tools (“AI”) that help generate and enhance job descriptions and AI may have been used to create this description. The position description has been reviewed for accuracy and Dice believes it to correctly reflect the job opportunity.