Principal Data Scientist - Industry Solutions Engineering

Job Description

Overview

Do you enjoy solving problems, looking at problems through a different lens, and working closely with customers to innovate new solutions to complex problems? Do you jump with excitement at the opportunity to identify trends and provide unique business solutions? Do you want to join a team where learning about a new technology or solution is part of our work every day?

The Industry Solutions Engineering (ISE) team is a global engineering organization that works side-by-side with customers, on a per-project basis, to collaboratively innovate custom solutions to solve their challenging business problems; from inception to production. We develop broadly applicable, high-impact solution patterns and open-source software assets in collaboration with Microsoft product teams, partners, and open-source communities. This role will be working in a delivery studio focusing on customers from the Retail & Consumer Goods and Telecoms, Media & Gaming industries.

We are hiring a Principal Data Scientist to build and deploy AI systems at scale as part of a cross-functional team—working on projects spanning computer vision, NLP, recommendation systems, predictive analytics, and generative AI. You'll analyse complex datasets, design experiments to validate hypotheses, and establish metrics linking technical outcomes to business impact. Working alongside engineers and technical program managers, you'll architect end-to-end AI solutions, develop production-ready ML pipelines, and contribute to scalable infrastructure serving millions of users while implementing MLOps practices at enterprise scale.

The job title says "Data Scientist", but if you consider yourself an "AI/ML Engineer" this is still for you! 🔥

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our team prides itself on embracing a growth mindset, innovating to empower others, and collaborating 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.

Responsibilities

Business Understanding and Impact

• Leads data-science projects or teams to align with business needs and deliver value, providing thought leadership to all projects in the team’s portfolio.

Data Preparation and Understanding

• Leads data acquisition and understanding efforts for engineering projects using various tools and techniques. You’ll also coach engineers in data cleaning and analysis best practices, identify gaps in current data sets, and drive ethics and privacy discussions around data collection and preparation.

Modelling and Statistical Analysis

• Develops and applies ML frameworks and best practices for scalable and ethical solutions.

Evaluation

• You will evaluate your team’s models and recommend improvements as necessary, drive best practices for models, and develop operational models that run at scale. You’ll also conduct thorough reviews of data analysis and modeling techniques, and identify and invent new evaluation methods.

Industry and Research Knowledge/Opportunity Identification

• You will research and maintain a deep knowledge of the industry, including trends and technologies, so that you can identify strategy opportunities and contribute to thought leadership best practices.

Coding and Debugging

• You’ll also write extensible code that spans multiple features, and develop expertise in proper debugging techniques.

Business Management

• You will identify and curate patterns and best practices to be reused to accelerate solutions to customer challenges across a range of scenarios.

Customer/Partner Orientation

• You will define business, customer, and solution strategy goals, and partner with other teams to identify and explore new opportunities. You’ll also commit to a customer-oriented focus by acknowledging their needs, and offer customer pragmatic solutions that align with their data capabilities.

ther · Embody our culture and values

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• Doctorate OR Master's Degree OR Bachelor's Degree in Data Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Econometrics, Economics, Operations Research, Computer Science, or related field AND data-science experience (e.g., managing structured and unstructured data, applying statistical techniques and reporting results)
• Enjoy travel and are comfortable with travel up to 25%

Additional or Preferred Qualifications (PQs)

• Customer-facing project-delivery experience.

• Experience working as part of geographically dispersed, diverse, and virtual teams

Our team prides itself on embracing a growth mindset, inspiring excellence, and encouraging everyone to share their unique viewpoints and be their authentic selves. Join us and help create life-changing innovations that impact billions around the world!

At Microsoft, we are seeking people who have a passion for the positive impact technology can have on communities and for making a difference in the world. Within ISE, you will find a wide range of backgrounds, perspectives, personal and cultural experiences which are vital to our success with our customers. It’s an informal and flexible work environment and you’ll be welcome to work in the way that best enables you to get your job done.

We invest in your health, wellness, and financial future by offering a competitive package including a wide range of benefits built around your personal needs and those close to you.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations, and ordinances. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.

#ISEngineering

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.