Microsoft Excel is seeking an Applied Scientist II to bring cutting-edge AI technologies into production, delivering intelligent experiences directly in the Excel grid, and shape the future of productivity for hundreds of millions of users globally.
Requirements
- Experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C-Sharp, Java, JavaScript, or Python.
- Experience with coding in modern ML frameworks such as PyTorch (or equivalent).
- Hands-on experience orchestrating LLM-based agent pipelines - prompt engineering, tool invocation, context grounding and evaluation - for productivity scenarios, alongside other advanced ML techniques.
- Advanced degree (Master or PhD) in Computer Science, Math, Statistics, or related areas with industry experience or research publication in LLMs, ML, or NLP.
- Background in designing and implementing AI models that serve millions of users in scaled production environments or agent-based workflows for real-world productivity applications.
- Understanding of transformer-based architectures and hands-on experience with model optimization techniques (quantization, pruning, distillation, adapter tuning).
- Experience moving applied research into shipped product features, with clear ownership of the end-to-end ML lifecycle—data collection, cleaning, modeling, evaluation, prompt engineering and continuous improvement.
Responsibilities
- Drive complex orchestration of Copilot workflows and agent pipelines, blending prompt engineering, tool invocation, and context grounding for productivity scenarios.
- Contribute to the end-to-end development, deployment, and continuous improvement of advanced multimodal ML/LLM systems—including dataset curation, labeling strategy, model architecture, scalable training, and rigorous evaluation (offline and online).
- Stay current with research and industry trends, identifying opportunities to integrate emerging technologies and methods into the Excel Core ecosystem across the entire spectrum of AI adoption.
- Collaborate with engineering and product teams to define success metrics, design and execute experiments (e.g., A/B testing), monitor user signals, and iterate on deployed features.
- Develop innovating new functions like =COPILOT to mix the power of AI with the versatility and richness of the Excel Calculation engine.
- Reinvent how users interact with data through PivotTables, Charting, and new Copilot-driven insights.
- Re-architect the service-backed infrastructure that powers collaboration, Copilot, and core cloud capabilities by optimizing file storage and service protocols.
Other
- Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 2+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research).
- Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role.
- Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.
- Ability to work with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize shared goals.
- Embody Microsoft's culture and values, including respect, integrity, and accountability.
