Senior Research Software Development Engineer

Core AI is at the forefront of Microsoft's mission to redefine how software is built and experienced in the AI era. Our product portfolio includes vital developer tools like VS Code, Visual Studio, GitHub, AI Foundry, and others. Our work enables developers and enterprises to harness the full potential of AI to create intelligent, adaptive, and transformative software.

Guidance is an applied research and development team and technology stack focused on providing more precise control over language models. The team operates across the full research and development lifecycle, from research ideation through production deployment, with a primary focus on language model engines. Guidance advances enginelevel capabilities by developing new techniques that improve model accuracy, speed, reliability, and expressivity across a wide range of execution environments. An industry example of this work is llguidance, which originated structured output capabilities and helped drive their adoption across firstparty Microsoft engines and thirdparty model providers.

You will work as a Senior Research Software Development Engineer focused on advancing language model enginelevel capabilities through applied research to integration. This role is responsible for integrating inhouse techniques and stateoftheart research into a variety of firstparty (1P) Microsoft engines and thirdparty (3P) industry engines. You will translate research ideas into highperformance, productionready implementations, contributing directly to new engine capabilities that improve model correctness, efficiency, robustness, and expressive control.

• Advance language model engine capabilities through applied research and production engineering, integrating inhouse innovations and stateoftheart techniques to improve model accuracy, speed, reliability, and expressivity across firstparty and thirdparty engines.
• Design, implement, and review performancecritical engine code (primarily in Python and Rust), ensuring high standards for correctness, test coverage, security, diagnosability, and maintainability, while coaching peers through rigorous and timely code reviews.
• Apply AInative development practices across the full SDLC, using AI tools responsibly for design, coding, testing, and analysis, and taking ownership of the quality and correctness of AIassisted outputs while helping establish best practices across the team.
• Develop and evolve advanced inference techniques (e.g., speculative decoding, constrained decoding, structured generation), validating design choices through experimentation, benchmarking, and production telemetry.
• Own enginelevel design and integration decisions, producing clear design documents, evaluating tradeoffs across multiple architectural options, and collaborating across teams to ensure solutions meet requirements for performance, scalability, reliability, security, and cost.
• Drive engineering excellence in production environments, including comprehensive testing strategies, observability, livesite readiness, incident response, and postincident learning, with a focus on reducing operational risk in multitenant inference systems.
• Contribute to and leverage opensource LM infrastructure where appropriate, responsibly reusing and extending external code, sharing learnings with the broader community, and continuously staying current with emerging research, tools, and enginelevel techniques.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 4+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to Rust or C++, and Python
  • OR equivalent experience.

• Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 6+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, Rust or C++, and Python
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, Rust or C++, and Python
  • OR equivalent experience.
• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, including ownership of complex, productionquality systems
• Strong proficiency in Python and at least one systems programming language (e.g., Rust, C++, or equivalent), with experience writing and maintaining performancecritical code.
• Opensource contributions or industry experience in language model infrastructure (e.g., vLLM, sglang, llguidance, or comparable LM libraries), including work on core engine logic rather than application layers.
• Handson familiarity with advanced inference techniques, such as speculative decoding, constrained decoding, or related inferencetime capabilities.

Software Engineering IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $119,800 - $234,700 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 $158,400 - $258,000 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.