Job description

Overview CADET (Customer and Analytics Driven Evals Team) is building a customer-grounded quality system for Copilot. Our mission is to rapidly identify the customer scenarios that matter most, represent them faithfully in evaluation and learning assets, run quality gates continuously, and turn every important failure into reusable product and model improvements. We bring together DSAT and other product signals, deep customer engagements to create representative eval sets. Operating in a fast-paced environment, we connect customer grounded quality issues with quality teams to advance Copilot quality and product innovation. We are looking for a Principal Applied Scientist to work directly with enterprise customers and Copilot teams, translating high-value workflows, expected outcomes, and recurring pain points into trusted evaluation and learning signals. You will set the scientific direction for customer-grounded quality: define what “good” means, assess whether eval portfolios represent real needs, diagnose model and agent failures, and convert evidence into reusable evals, RLEs, reward signals, and post-training priorities. The ideal candidate combines scientific depth with product judgment and can turn ambiguous customer problems into rigorous, scalable methods in partnership with applied researchers and ML engineers. 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 • Set the scientific strategy for customer-grounded quality across priority Copilot intents, defining what good means and the tradeoffs across various quality and safety attributes • Translate user research, enterprise customer feedback, DSAT, and production incidents into evaluation and post-training priorities, then lead cross-team creation of reusable evaluation, regression, RLE, and post-training assets for the highest-value workflows and failure patterns. • Develop methods to assess evaluation-set representativeness, coverage, freshness, discrimination, grader reliability, and alignment with production outcomes, identifying material gaps, drift, and emerging loss patterns. • Design behavior and task evaluations, rubrics, graders, and calibration methods that translate qualitative customer expectations into measurable release-over-release quality. • Establish methods to attribute quality losses across grounding, retrieval, tools, orchestration, model reasoning, response generation, and evaluation, linking offline movement with online signals such as DSAT, task completion, retries, abandonment, and escalation. • Set a high bar for scientific rigor, reproducibility, documentation, and interpretation of results while mentoring scientists and engineers and influencing evaluation and post-training strategy across organizational boundaries. Qualifications Required Qualifications: • Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 6+ 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 AND 4+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research) • OR Doctorate in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 3+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research) • OR equivalent experience. Preferred: Qualifications: • Advanced degree in computer science, machine learning, statistics, applied mathematics, or a related quantitative field, or equivalent practical experience. • Significant experience applying machine learning, natural language processing, information retrieval, reinforcement learning, experimentation, or evaluation methods to complex production systems. • Experience designing evaluations, metrics, experiments, datasets, graders, or reward functions for AI or agentic systems. • Hands-on ability to inspect model outputs, identify behavioral patterns, and translate qualitative judgments into testable hypotheses and measurable evaluation criteria. • Solid understanding of statistical inference, sampling, measurement validity, bias, uncertainty, and experimental design. • Solid written and verbal communication skills, with a demonstrated ability to drive results across organizational boundaries by aligning science, engineering, product, and platform teams around shared quality goals, explicit ownership boundaries, and measurable outcomes. • Experience with large language models, copilots, agents, tool use, retrieval-augmented generation, or enterprise grounding. • Experience running or partnering on RLHF, direct preference optimization, instruction tuning, fine-tuning, or human-preference data programs. • Experience connecting offline metrics with online product behavior and customer outcomes. • Experience working directly with enterprise customers or translating qualitative research and customer signals into scientific assets. • Publication record, patents, or demonstrated industry impact in relevant applied research areas. #cadets Applied Sciences IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $274,800 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 $188,000 - $304,200 per year. Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: careers.microsoft.com 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.

Requirements

Must-haves

Set the scientific strategy for customer-grounded quality across priority Copilot intents, defining what good means and the tradeoffs across various quality and safety attributes
Develop methods to assess evaluation-set representativeness, coverage, freshness, discrimination, grader reliability, and alignment with production outcomes, identifying material gaps, drift, and emerging loss patterns.
Design behavior and task evaluations, rubrics, graders, and calibration methods that translate qualitative customer expectations into measurable release-over-release quality.
OR Doctorate in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 3+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research)
OR equivalent experience.
Advanced degree in computer science, machine learning, statistics, applied mathematics, or a related quantitative field, or equivalent practical experience.
Significant experience applying machine learning, natural language processing, information retrieval, reinforcement learning, experimentation, or evaluation methods to complex production systems.
Experience designing evaluations, metrics, experiments, datasets, graders, or reward functions for AI or agentic systems.
Hands-on ability to inspect model outputs, identify behavioral patterns, and translate qualitative judgments into testable hypotheses and measurable evaluation criteria.
Solid understanding of statistical inference, sampling, measurement validity, bias, uncertainty, and experimental design.
Experience with large language models, copilots, agents, tool use, retrieval-augmented generation, or enterprise grounding.
Experience running or partnering on RLHF, direct preference optimization, instruction tuning, fine-tuning, or human-preference data programs.
Experience connecting offline metrics with online product behavior and customer outcomes.
Experience working directly with enterprise customers or translating qualitative research and customer signals into scientific assets.
Publication record, patents, or demonstrated industry impact in relevant applied research areas.
Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Nice-to-haves

None flagged.

Application prep

Use the role’s language and application details while tailoring your materials.

Keywords to mirror

mlmachine learningai

Platform: eightfold
Effort: medium