Senior Researcher

The PROSE team is advancing the state of the art in program synthesis and shipping these innovations through flagship Microsoft products that impact millions of users worldwide. These products include the world's most popular spreadsheet software Excel, the industry-leading IDEs Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code, the power platform suite of products including Power BI, PowerApps, PowerAutomate, and other software tools including Azure Data Studio, Azure Data Monitor, Azure Data Factory, PowerShell, and SQL Server Management Studio. The application domains range from developer productivity, business user low-code/no-code scenarios to even programming education. To power these features PROSE has developed a powerful and flexible framework for program synthesis that leverages techniques from both logical reasoning and machine learning (including LLMs) and combines them in unique ways to synthesize programs automatically. This approach has been recognized with frequent papers at top-tier conferences and awards, including best paper and test-of-time awards.  

We invite researchers with machine learning, programming language, or software engineering research to apply for a full-time Senior Researcher position on the PROSE team at Microsoft. The recent success of large language models (LLMs) creates an opportunity to take a qualitative step forward, to extend dramatically the reach of what users can do with LLMs. Our team provides a unique opportunity to work at the intersection of cutting-edge AI research and real-world impact, solving customer problems on a global scale. Researchers design and carry out the research underlying state-of-the-art systems and work together with world-class engineers to implement these systems in production. To learn more about our approach and culture see this award talk on the story behind one of the team's early innovations: the Flash Fill feature in Excel. 

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.

• Design and carry out innovative AI research with applications to code and data platforms (e.g., Excel, Visual Studio).
• Work with engineers and PMs to deploy your research to customers.
• Collaborate with academic partners, mentor interns and longer-term research fellows.
• Publish in top-tier academic venues and interact with the broader academic community. 

Required Qualifications:

• Doctorate in relevant field
  • OR 5+ years of equivalent experience.
  • Experience working with large language models
• At least 3 publications in top-tier machine learning, programming language, software engineering, human-computer interactions or relevant venues (e.g. AAAI, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, EMNLP, NAACL, ACL, POPL, PLDI, OOPSLA, ICSE, FSE, CHI, UIST, and comparable). 
• Ability to develop an original research agenda, demonstrated by leading at least one publication in a top-tier machine learning, programming language, software engineering, HCI or relevant venue. 

• Doctorate in relevant field AND 2+ years related research experience
  • OR equivalent experience.
• Experience publishing academic papers as a lead author or essential contributor.
• Experience participating in a top conference in relevant research domain.
• Experienced in training transformer-based models, including data collection and curation, for research projects in both industrial and academic settings. 
• Proficient in building interactive AI systems. 
• Interested in applying machine learning to spreadsheet tasks. 
• Previous experience in industrial research internships. 
• Solid collaboration skills in multi-disciplinary or cross-functional teams.
• Excellent communication skills. 

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.