Outlook is the crown jewel of the M365 suite products, with its vast user base playing a critical role in driving both innovation and customer success at Microsoft. As we lead the next wave of AI, Outlook's Co-pilot feature has become one of the most utilized tools among M365 Co-pilot apps. We continue to invest in science-based, insights-driven product development to enhance accelerate our AI efforts.

As a senior applied scientist, you will play a critical role in advancing our Outlook's Co-pilot efforts in the areas of Large Language Model (LLM), Prompt Eng, Evaluation, Relevance and Responsible AI (RAI). This multifaceted role is responsible for developing an end-to-end infrastructure and measurement framework, fostering cross-functional collaboration, and leveraging data science and AI expertise to guide decision-making. The successful candidate will work with multiple large organizations and stakeholders to drive the evaluation of our LLM systems and associated components.

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.  

Responsibilities

• Strategic Leadership : Develop and execute a comprehensive strategy for LLM evaluation, encompassing LLM costs, model performance, model utility (user experience and prompt effectiveness), and responsible AI considerations, in alignment with company-wide efforts and informed by emerging research.

• Program Management : Oversee and manage large-scale, cross-functional evaluation programs, ensuring alignment with organizational objectives and timelines. Develop and maintain a robust measurement framework to track and report on LLM performance and user impact. Drive engineering product roadmap to construct automated evaluation pipelines integrated into the product workflow

• Data Science Expertise: Utilize strong data science skills to design experiments, analyze data, create measurement and metrics, and derive actionable insights to enhance LLM systems. Responsible for influencing product and user experience based on evaluation results.

• Model and Prompt Evaluation : Lead efforts to assess and improve the performance and effectiveness of language models and prompts, driving iterative enhancements. 

• User Experience Enhancement : Collaborate with User Experience teams to evaluate and optimize user interactions with AI systems, enhancing user satisfaction.

• Responsible AI (RAI) : Implement RAI and DSB principles and guidelines in AI systems, ensuring ethical and unbiased practices in model development and deployment.

• Contribute to the LLM research body: form partnerships and lead deep research initiatives in areas of LLM evaluation and user experience optimization that contribute to the scientific body and deepen the product team's understanding and expertise of user mental models of and alignment to LLM-powered experience

• Cross-Functional Collaboration : Work with engineering, research, product, and other teams to ensure seamless integration of evaluation processes into the development lifecycle.

• Stakeholder Engagement : Communicate findings and recommendations to executive leadership, fostering a data-driven culture within the organization.

Qualifications

Required qualifications:

• Master’s or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, or a related field.

• 5+ years of hands-on experience in machine learning, data science, or applied science, with a proven track record of developing and deploying ML models in production environments.

• Strong experience in architecting and integrating machine learning models into customer-facing products, with a focus on optimizing relevance, personalization, and user engagement.

• Proven expertise in program management and leading cross-functional teams.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Expertise of LLM in finetuning, evaluation techniques, implementing RAG techniques and industry best practices.

• Strong understanding of responsible AI principles.

• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills.

• Strong communication and presentation abilities.

• Ability to work in a fast-paced and dynamic environment.

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Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, 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 and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations (https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/accessibility.html) .