Principal Applied Scientist

Microsoft

Confirmed live yesterday High trust

Hybrid

Quick summary

Work type: Hybrid
Location: —
Salary: $142,800–$274,800 / yr
Posted: 2 days ago
Freshness: Confirmed live yesterday
Closes: Apr 25, 2027

Market check

Salary context

Competitive pay

How this pay compares to similar roles

Similar $222k

This role $209k

$127k $291k

below market most similar roles pay here above market

This role pays more than 52% of similar roles. Most pay $190,405–$254,037 — the blue band above. At the midpoint, this role pays about $209k versus about $222k 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 687 open roles on FindRole.

Listed pay typically runs $119,800–$234,700 across 646 roles with salary data.

Most-posted roles

View all roles at Microsoft

At a glance

TL;DR · Principal Applied Scientist

Role Posting Log in to save

The Principal Applied Scientist joins the Microsoft 365 team to build the intelligence powering infrastructure capacity. This role involves developing AI-driven automation and agentic systems to manage infrastructure health and capacity at runtime. You will build models for anomaly detection, automated root-cause analysis, and time-series forecasting to predict capacity needs. Key responsibilities include designing mathematical optimization models and moving research prototypes into production systems. The role requires proficiency in Python, C#, C++, or R, along with frameworks like PyTorch, scikit-learn, and LLM-based tools such as LangGraph or AutoGen. Candidates must utilize SQL and large-scale data platforms like Spark or Kusto. The work addresses the technical challenge of transitioning manual infrastructure operations into autonomous systems that observe, reason, and act on telemetry data.

What does a Applied Scientist earn?

Median $208800 from 59 postings across 10 companies.

See salary data

Skills

Python PyTorch scikit-learn SQL Azure Data Lake Spark Kusto Hive C# C++ R Agentic Systems Retrieval-Augmented Generation Time-series Forecasting Anomaly Detection Mathematical Optimization Operations Research AIOps

What you'll do

Build AI-driven automation and agentic systems to manage infrastructure capacity and health at runtime.
Develop models to detect anomalies and emerging issues in large-scale telemetry data.
Build systems for automated root-cause analysis by reasoning across signals, logs, and dependencies.
Design automated mitigation workflows to close the loop from detection to resolution.
Develop and scale forecasting models and pipelines to predict capacity needs for Microsoft 365 and Copilot.
Design machine learning and mathematical optimization models to improve service efficiency and reliability.
Transition research ideas into durable production systems that the business can depend on.

What we're looking for

Bachelor's degree in a quantitative field and 6+ years related experience, Master's and 4+ years, or Doctorate and 2+ years.
Master's degree and 9+ years related experience, or Doctorate and 6+ years related experience, or equivalent experience.
Ability to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check and other security screenings.
5+ years experience creating publications such as patents, libraries, or peer-reviewed academic papers.
2+ years experience as an invited speaker at conferences or other outside research/industry events.
5+ years experience conducting research as part of a research program in academic or industry settings.
3+ years experience developing and deploying live production systems or products from ideation to shipping.
Experience building ML/AI solutions in Python, C#, C++, or R using PyTorch, scikit-learn, or LLM-based tools.

Save