New 
Senior Applied Scientist
 Microsoft | |
 United States, Washington, Redmond | |
 Oct 10, 2025 | |
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OverviewDo you want to shape the future of conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) and build the next generation of intelligent agents at global scale? As a Senior Applied Scientist on the Azure CoreAI team, you'll have the opportunity to advance state-of-the-art language understanding and question answering technologies, while directly impacting the way customers interact with AI-powered systems. The Azure Language AI team empowers developers and data scientists around the world and of all skill levels to easily integrate AI capabilities into their apps. The Azure Language AI team provides an extensive array of AI-powered language services and offline solutions to assist customers in building intelligent applications. Joining our team presents a wonderful opportunity to collaborate with highly skilled scientists and engineers while tackling our upcoming major challenges. What are your top 3 priorities for this position? Advance Conversational AI Models - Drive innovation in Conversational Language Understanding (CLU), Conversational Question Answering (CQA), and prompt optimization by training, fine-tuning, and evaluating large language models (LLMs), small language models (SLMs), and agentic models to push state-of-the-art conversational intelligence. Deliver Production-Ready Solutions - Translate research into scalable, high-quality code and collaborate with engineers to ship solutions that power Azure AI services and directly impact customers. Lead with Science + Strategy - Stay at the forefront of Natural Language Processing (NLP) research and Azure AI advancements, ensuring our services not only meet current customer needs but anticipate and shape future trends in conversational AI. You'll be joining the team at the heart of Microsoft Azure's Conversational AI, where the models you build don't just live in papers-they power real products used by millions worldwide. We own Conversational Language Understanding, Conversational Q&A, and Prompt Optimization for agentic scenarios, giving you the chance to work on both cutting-edge LLM science and production-scale engineering. If you want to shape the future of how people and businesses interact with AI-and see your work land directly in customer solutions at global scale-this is the team to be on. You'll be part of a team that owns Microsoft's core conversational AI stack, powering experiences across Azure AI. The work you do will not just stay in research papers-it will land in customer-facing services used worldwide. If you thrive at the intersection of cutting-edge science and real-world impact, this role is for you. Microsoft Culture 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. In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positivelyimpactour culture every day.
ResponsibilitiesOwn end-to-end applied science contributions across Conversational Language Understanding (CLU), Conversational Question Answering (CQA), and Prompt Optimization for agentic scenarios. Design, train, and fine-tune large language models (LLMs), small language models (SLMs), and agentic models, pushing the boundaries of how conversational systems reason and respond. Develop evaluation techniques and metrics that capture both traditional Machine Language (ML) rigor and the nuances of conversational quality. Collaborate closely with software engineers and data scientists to deliver production-ready solutions that enhance chatbot and agentic capabilities for enterprise customers. Stay ahead of the curve by keeping up with NLP research, Azure AI advancements, and emerging conversational AI trends, and apply those insights to practical, scalable products. Translates business goals into actionable plans by applying cutting-edge research.Contribute to innovations that power flagship Microsoft products.Document findings and contribute to publications and open-source efforts.MS Culture & Values: Embody our Culture and Values. | |