Principal Applied Science Manager

Microsoft

Confirmed live yesterday High trust

Hybrid

Quick summary

Work type: Hybrid
Location: —
Salary: $165,600–$296,400 / yr
Posted: 2 days ago
Freshness: Confirmed live yesterday
Closes: Mar 17, 2027

Market check

Salary context

Above market

How this pay compares to similar roles

Similar $210k

This role $231k

$143k most similar roles pay here $313k

This role pays more than 69% of similar roles. Most pay $177,693–$241,750 — the shaded band above. At the midpoint, this role pays about $231k versus about $210k for comparable roles.

Based on 240 similar postings.

Employer

About Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology leader producing software, hardware, and cloud services including Windows, Office 365, Azure cloud platform, Xbox gaming, and Surface devices. Industry: Software & Cloud Computing

Microsoft currently has 658 open roles on FindRole.

Listed pay typically runs $119,800–$234,700 across 642 roles with salary data.

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At a glance

TL;DR · Principal Applied Science Manager

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As a Principal Applied Science Manager on the Outlook Science Team, you will lead a team of applied scientists focused on improving AI quality for communication, summarization, search, recommendation, and agentic experiences. You will be responsible for building scalable evaluation systems that combine human labels, LLM graders, telemetry, shadow experiments, and online A/B testing to improve metrics like recall, precision, grounding, and hallucination reduction. The role involves diagnosing complex production failures involving tool use, memory, and retrieval while translating user feedback into actionable science. You will develop post-training and adaptation strategies for frontier and open-source models to enhance product quality. Key technical areas include LLMs, agentic systems, NLP, information retrieval, ranking, and personalization. This role solves the challenge of turning frontier model capabilities into reliable, trustworthy products within a large-scale communication ecosystem.

Skills

LLM GenAI NLP Machine Learning Information Retrieval Ranking A/B Testing Telemetry Analysis Post-training Data Science Statistics

What you'll do

Lead and grow a team of applied scientists focused on AI quality, evaluation, and post-training.
Define "good" for AI-powered communication, summarization, search, recommendation, and agentic experiences.
Build scalable evaluation systems using human labels, LLM graders, telemetry, and A/B testing.
Improve critical quality dimensions including recall, precision, grounding, hallucination reduction, and task completion.
Diagnose complex production failures involving user context, tool use, memory, and retrieval.
Translate user feedback and production telemetry into actionable science and product insights.
Develop post-training and adaptation strategies for frontier and open-source models to improve quality.
Connect offline evaluation metrics to online outcomes like user satisfaction and engagement.

What we're looking for

Bachelor's degree plus 8 years of experience, Master's plus 6 years, or Doctorate plus 5 years in a relevant technical field.
3+ years of people management experience.
Ability to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check.
10+ years of experience in applied science, machine learning, AI, data science, or large-scale production AI systems (preferred).
Experience leading applied science teams or major cross-functional science initiatives (preferred).
Demonstrated experience building, evaluating, or improving production AI or machine-learning systems (preferred).
Background in experimentation, metrics, telemetry analysis, evaluation, or systematic product-quality improvement (preferred).
Deep experience with LLMs, agentic systems, post-training, tool use, and GenAI product development (preferred).

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