Principal Data & Applied Scientist

Do you have a passion for Data and Machine Learning? Do you dream of working with customers on their most forward-looking AI initiatives? Does developing modern machine learning solutions to solve real-world business problems in the cloud sound exciting to you? You may be the Principal Data & Applied Scientist we have been looking for!

The Commercial Software Engineering (CSE) team is a global engineering organization that works directly with customers looking to leverage the latest technologies to address their toughest problems and transform their industries using cloud-based solutions. We sit side-by-side with our customers to collaboratively innovate custom solutions tailored to their business needs. In the process, we help shape the future of our own platforms by partnering with our product groups to improve them. We pride ourselves on making contributions to open source and make our platforms easier to adopt. Our work involves the development of high-impact software assets that contribute to the Microsoft platform that are broadly applicable.

We are looking for a Principal Data Scientist with strong analytical and development skills to join our expanding team. The ideal candidate has extensive expertise in machine learning and is passionate about creating business value through building robust and performant cloud-based solutions infused with AI. They should be comfortable with the end-to-end ML/AI solutions development process, starting from understanding the customer business problem and ending with production implementation of machine learning pipelines. Don’t worry, we will never ask you to implement the entire ML system all by yourself. We will, however, expect you to be able to contribute to any of its parts. We don’t develop awesome models to see them wilt and die in a Jupyter notebook on someone’s laptop. Instead, we nurture them into production via a fully reproducible continuous delivery process reinforced by a battery of full lifecycle tests. If you’re the type of person who likes both the science and engineering aspects of machine learning, we want to talk to you!

As a group, we work to build consensus with our teammates and customers. We’re looking for the sort of person who enjoys a culture that ensures that all voices and perspectives are heard and considered. Above all we want you to be inspired, and inspire others, by the potential of the future. If you want to chat informally about the role, please reach out to us.

Responsibilities

• Developing and deploying solutions with some of Microsoft’s largest customers for solving business problems using machine (deep) learning and predictive modeling techniques.
• End-to-end execution of the ML/AI solution development process: from understanding business requirements, data discovery and extraction, model development and evaluation, to production pipeline implementation.
• Providing technical recommendations in open source and Microsoft AI and Data technologies, ranging from helping our product teams understand product and technology gaps, through to navigating our customers to the right technology choices for their business.
• Driving and contributing to organizational improvements in delivering impactful ML/AI solutions for our customers.

Qualifications

We are seeking people who have experiences which reflect the qualifications below: 

Required Qualifications:

• 5+ years of industry experience with machine learning algorithms for at least one of the following: classification, regression, clustering, reinforcement learning, dimensionality reduction. Expertise in one or more application domains of NLP, computer vision, time series modeling, including some knowledge of the concepts of taking projects to scale in the cloud.
• 5+ years of experience in research and development of ML/AI based solutions and systems.
• Fluency in English.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Skilled in Python, experience with Pandas, Scikit-learn. Most of our work uses Python ML stack. Being also comfortable with R is a big plus.
• Experience with agile development practices and Git version control. We build reproducible systems.
• Experience with one or more of the DNN frameworks like TensorFlow or PyTorch. Many of our projects involve deep learning models.
• Domain experience in one or more of the following domains: financial services, retail, marketing, health care, manufacturing, media, or telecommunications.
• Ability to communicate in business and technical settings. We need to be able to build models and explain to others how and why they work.
• Enjoy travel and comfortable with regional travel up to 20%. We meet customers where they are, both technically and geographically. (Nobody is expected to travel for business until the COVID-19 pandemic is under control.)
• Some experience with Spark, SQL, Graph stores, or NoSQL stores would be helpful. Many of our customers have a lot of data.
• MS or PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Statistics, Operations Research or equivalent technical field.
  

At Microsoft, we are seeking people who have a passion for the positive impact technology can have on communities and for making a difference in the world. Within CSE, you will find a wide range of backgrounds, perspectives, and personal and cultural experiences which are vital to our success with our customers. It’s an informal and flexible work environment and you’ll be welcome to work from home, our offices, customer sites– wherever is best for you to get your job done. We invest in your health, wellness, and financial future by offering a competitive package including a wide range of benefits built around your personal needs and those close to you.

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.

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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