Senior Applied Scientist

Microsoft

Confirmed live yesterday High trust
Hybrid

Quick summary

Work type
Hybrid
Location
—
Salary
$119,800–$234,700 / yr
Posted
119 days ago
Freshness
Confirmed live yesterday
Closes
Nov 10, 2026

Market check

Salary context

Competitive pay

How this pay compares to similar roles

Similar $197k
This role $177k
$106k most similar roles pay here $248k

This role pays less than 51% of similar roles. Most pay $161,250–$231,812 — the shaded band above. At the midpoint, this role pays about $177k versus about $197k 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 598 open roles on FindRole.

Listed pay typically runs $119,800–$234,700 across 586 roles with salary data.

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At a glance

TL;DR · Senior Applied Scientist

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As a Senior Applied Scientist on the Signals Modeling team, you will develop core intelligence to predict how users interact with advertisements. You will design and train transformer-based models with billions of parameters to power ad ranking, pricing, and optimization across large-scale surfaces. Your daily work involves building end-to-end machine learning systems, including data and label construction, representation learning, multi-task objectives, and calibration for scenarios where signals are sparse or delayed. You will develop robust training pipelines that transform weak signals into high-quality targets while solving problems related to marketplace economics and advertiser ROI. The role requires expertise in deep learning, tree-based models, linear models, and feature engineering using Python and frameworks like PyTorch or TensorFlow. You will also apply skills in causal inference, attribution, and offline and online evaluation to improve user experience at web scale.

What does a Applied Scientist earn?

Median $208800 from 47 postings across 10 companies.

See salary data

Skills

Deep Learning Python PyTorch TensorFlow Machine Learning Feature Engineering Multi-task Learning Causal Inference Data Pipelines Model Calibration offline evaluation Online Evaluation Recommendation Systems Statistics Econometrics

What you'll do

  • Develop transformer-based models to predict user interactions, ad ranking, and pricing at scale.
  • Build data pipelines to transform weak signals like dwell time into high-quality training targets.
  • Design multi-task and proxy-signal models to infer user intent from sparse or delayed feedback.
  • Implement model calibration and reliability analysis for production-grade systems.
  • Develop end-to-end ML pipelines including data construction, representation learning, and offline/online evaluation.
  • Create robust estimation models for conversion, attribution, and marketplace dynamics.
  • Deploy production-ready models that directly impact advertiser ROI and user experience.

What we're looking for

  • Bachelor's degree in a relevant field and 4+ years of experience, or Master's with 3+ years, or Doctorate with 1+ year.
  • Experience building and shipping machine learning models in production for at least 4 years.
  • Proficiency in Python and at least one major ML framework like PyTorch or TensorFlow.
  • Experience working with large-scale data to build end-to-end modeling pipelines including preparation, training, and deployment.
  • Expertise in modern ML models such as deep learning, tree-based models, linear models, and feature engineering.
  • Experience with conversion, outcome, or funnel modeling and handling noisy, weak, or proxy labels.
  • Knowledge of model calibration, reliability analysis, uncertainty estimation, causal inference, and multi-task learning systems.
  • Experience in offline evaluation and online A/B experimentation for machine learning systems.

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