Scientist Jobs at Microsoft with Visa Sponsorship
Scientist jobs at Microsoft span research, applied science, and machine learning across teams building products used by billions. Microsoft has a well-established sponsorship process for technical roles like this one, supporting candidates through H-1B visa, E-3 visa, and Green Card pathways from offer through filing.
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You’re joining Core AI, the team at the forefront of redefining how software is built and experienced. We create the foundational platforms, services, and developer experiences that power next-generation applications using Generative AI, enabling developers and enterprises to unlock the full potential of AI to build intelligent, adaptive, and transformative software.
You will be a technical contributor driving the applied science foundation for observability in AI agents and multi-agent systems running at scale. This role focuses on understanding how intelligent agents behave in production—their quality, safety, reliability, cost, and evolution over time. You will develop and apply scientific methods, evaluation frameworks, and measurement systems that help teams understand, benchmark, diagnose, and safely improve agent-based systems with confidence.
AI agents introduce fundamentally new observability challenges: non-deterministic execution, tool- and model-driven decision paths, emergent multi-agent behaviors, and quality signals that go far beyond traditional uptime metrics.
We are hiring multiple Senior and Principal Applied Scientists who will operate at the intersection of agent architecture, telemetry, evaluation science, and responsible AI, shaping how Microsoft measures and improves observable AI systems.
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. In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day.
Responsibilities
- Develop evaluation and measurement frameworks for single-agent and multi-agent systems, spanning quality, safety, reliability, cost, and behavioral consistency.
- Design methodologies that connect offline evals, online signals, and production telemetry to explain how prompt, tool, model, or orchestration changes affect real-world agent performance.
- Define scientifically grounded quality signals and benchmarks for agent systems, including task success, tool-use effectiveness, plan quality, failure modes, coordination quality, and user-perceived outcomes.
- Build models and analysis techniques that help detect regressions, identify root causes, and characterize agent behavior across diverse workflows and environments.
- Advance observability for AI systems through new approaches to trace analysis, agent health modeling, behavioral clustering, anomaly detection, and multi-agent coordination analysis.
- Partner with engineering teams to operationalize evaluation and observability methods in production systems, enabling safe iteration through staged rollouts, experimentation, A/B testing, and automated regression detection.
- Contribute to instrumentation and semantic standards for agent observability, helping make agent execution more explainable, diagnosable, and comparable across systems.
- Collaborate deeply with product and platform teams across Foundry, Azure Monitor, and agent runtimes to shape end-to-end experiences for evaluation, benchmarking, monitoring, and investigation.
- Act as a technical leader by setting scientific direction, driving research-informed product decisions, mentoring others, and raising the technical bar across the organization.
Technical Focus Areas
- Evaluation science for agent and multi-agent systems: offline, online, and continuous evals; benchmark design; synthetic data; task success measurement
- Agent and multi-agent architectures: planners, tool use, memory, orchestration, and coordination patterns
- Applied machine learning and statistical methods for behavioral analysis, anomaly detection, experimentation, and regression detection
- Observability data for AI systems: traces, logs, metrics, evaluations, and cost/performance signals
- Safety and responsible AI signals: policy compliance, risk detection, auditability, and safe logging
- Benchmarking and experimentation for agent systems, including A/B tests, canaries, and staged rollouts
- Explainability and diagnosis for complex agent workflows and model-driven decision paths
Qualifications
Required Qualifications
Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 4+ years related experience (e.g., statistics predictive analytics, research)
OR Master's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 3+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research)
OR Doctorate in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 1+ year(s) related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research)
OR equivalent experience
Other Requirements
Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings:
- Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.
Preferred Qualifications
- Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 9+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research)
OR Master's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 6+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research)
OR Doctorate in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 4+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research)
OR equivalent experience.
- Experience designing evaluation methodologies, experiments, or measurement systems for complex intelligent or distributed systems
- Experience analyzing large-scale production or experimental data to derive actionable insights and drive product or system improvements
- Strong coding and prototyping skills in Python or similar languages, with the ability to work closely with engineering teams on production-facing systems
- Demonstrated ability to lead cross-team technical direction through scientific depth, influence, and strong problem framing
- Advanced degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, or related field
- Experience building or evaluating LLM- or agent-based systems in production
- Familiarity with agent frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, OpenAI SDK, or equivalent orchestration frameworks
- Experience with evaluation frameworks for AI systems, including benchmarking, regression analysis, and human-in-the-loop assessment
- Experience with observability systems, telemetry analysis, or distributed tracing data in large-scale environments
- Background in AI safety, guardrails, and responsible AI measurement
- Experience with experimentation platforms, causal inference, or statistical methods for product and model evaluation
- Experience working with cloud-scale monitoring platforms such as Azure Monitor / Application Insights or equivalent
Compensation
Applied Sciences IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $119,800 - $234,700 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $158,400 - $258,000 per year.
Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
Applied Sciences IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $139,900 - $274,800 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $188,000 - $304,200 per year.
Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
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.
Overview
You’re joining Core AI, the team at the forefront of redefining how software is built and experienced. We create the foundational platforms, services, and developer experiences that power next-generation applications using Generative AI, enabling developers and enterprises to unlock the full potential of AI to build intelligent, adaptive, and transformative software.
You will be a technical contributor driving the applied science foundation for observability in AI agents and multi-agent systems running at scale. This role focuses on understanding how intelligent agents behave in production—their quality, safety, reliability, cost, and evolution over time. You will develop and apply scientific methods, evaluation frameworks, and measurement systems that help teams understand, benchmark, diagnose, and safely improve agent-based systems with confidence.
AI agents introduce fundamentally new observability challenges: non-deterministic execution, tool- and model-driven decision paths, emergent multi-agent behaviors, and quality signals that go far beyond traditional uptime metrics.
We are hiring multiple Senior and Principal Applied Scientists who will operate at the intersection of agent architecture, telemetry, evaluation science, and responsible AI, shaping how Microsoft measures and improves observable AI systems.
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. In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day.
Responsibilities
- Develop evaluation and measurement frameworks for single-agent and multi-agent systems, spanning quality, safety, reliability, cost, and behavioral consistency.
- Design methodologies that connect offline evals, online signals, and production telemetry to explain how prompt, tool, model, or orchestration changes affect real-world agent performance.
- Define scientifically grounded quality signals and benchmarks for agent systems, including task success, tool-use effectiveness, plan quality, failure modes, coordination quality, and user-perceived outcomes.
- Build models and analysis techniques that help detect regressions, identify root causes, and characterize agent behavior across diverse workflows and environments.
- Advance observability for AI systems through new approaches to trace analysis, agent health modeling, behavioral clustering, anomaly detection, and multi-agent coordination analysis.
- Partner with engineering teams to operationalize evaluation and observability methods in production systems, enabling safe iteration through staged rollouts, experimentation, A/B testing, and automated regression detection.
- Contribute to instrumentation and semantic standards for agent observability, helping make agent execution more explainable, diagnosable, and comparable across systems.
- Collaborate deeply with product and platform teams across Foundry, Azure Monitor, and agent runtimes to shape end-to-end experiences for evaluation, benchmarking, monitoring, and investigation.
- Act as a technical leader by setting scientific direction, driving research-informed product decisions, mentoring others, and raising the technical bar across the organization.
Technical Focus Areas
- Evaluation science for agent and multi-agent systems: offline, online, and continuous evals; benchmark design; synthetic data; task success measurement
- Agent and multi-agent architectures: planners, tool use, memory, orchestration, and coordination patterns
- Applied machine learning and statistical methods for behavioral analysis, anomaly detection, experimentation, and regression detection
- Observability data for AI systems: traces, logs, metrics, evaluations, and cost/performance signals
- Safety and responsible AI signals: policy compliance, risk detection, auditability, and safe logging
- Benchmarking and experimentation for agent systems, including A/B tests, canaries, and staged rollouts
- Explainability and diagnosis for complex agent workflows and model-driven decision paths
Qualifications
Required Qualifications
Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 4+ years related experience (e.g., statistics predictive analytics, research)
OR Master's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 3+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research)
OR Doctorate in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 1+ year(s) related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research)
OR equivalent experience
Other Requirements
Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings:
- Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.
Preferred Qualifications
- Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 9+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research)
OR Master's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 6+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research)
OR Doctorate in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 4+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research)
OR equivalent experience.
- Experience designing evaluation methodologies, experiments, or measurement systems for complex intelligent or distributed systems
- Experience analyzing large-scale production or experimental data to derive actionable insights and drive product or system improvements
- Strong coding and prototyping skills in Python or similar languages, with the ability to work closely with engineering teams on production-facing systems
- Demonstrated ability to lead cross-team technical direction through scientific depth, influence, and strong problem framing
- Advanced degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, or related field
- Experience building or evaluating LLM- or agent-based systems in production
- Familiarity with agent frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, OpenAI SDK, or equivalent orchestration frameworks
- Experience with evaluation frameworks for AI systems, including benchmarking, regression analysis, and human-in-the-loop assessment
- Experience with observability systems, telemetry analysis, or distributed tracing data in large-scale environments
- Background in AI safety, guardrails, and responsible AI measurement
- Experience with experimentation platforms, causal inference, or statistical methods for product and model evaluation
- Experience working with cloud-scale monitoring platforms such as Azure Monitor / Application Insights or equivalent
Compensation
Applied Sciences IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $119,800 - $234,700 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $158,400 - $258,000 per year.
Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
Applied Sciences IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $139,900 - $274,800 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $188,000 - $304,200 per year.
Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
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.
See all Scientist Jobs at Microsoft
Sign up for free to unlock all listings, filter by visa type, and get alerts for new Scientist Jobs at Microsoft.
Get Access To All JobsTips for Finding Scientist Jobs at Microsoft
Align your research profile with Microsoft's priorities
Microsoft Research and applied science teams hire heavily in AI, machine learning, and systems. Publishing in venues like NeurIPS, ICML, or CVPR signals direct relevance and makes your credentials easier to evaluate against the specialty occupation standard USCIS applies to Scientist petitions.
Confirm the team's fiscal year hiring window
Microsoft's large-scale H-1B filings are tied to its fiscal year and USCIS's April cap season. Scientist roles filled outside that window often use cap-exempt filings or E-3 for Australian citizens, so ask your recruiter directly which pathway applies to your offer timeline.
Use Migrate Mate to filter Scientist openings by visa type
Not every Scientist listing at Microsoft specifies sponsorship availability upfront. Migrate Mate lets you filter Microsoft's open Scientist roles by the visa types the company sponsors, so you're applying to positions where your visa category is already supported.
Distinguish your degree field from your job function early
USCIS scrutinizes whether your specific degree directly relates to the Scientist role being petitioned. If your doctorate is in physics but the role is on a computational biology team, prepare documentation showing how your field maps to the position's actual duties before your employer files Form I-129.
Ask about the Labor Condition Application before your start date
Microsoft must file a certified LCA with DOL before submitting your H-1B petition. Scientist roles sometimes have location flexibility, and if your work site differs from what the LCA covers, your employer needs to file an amended LCA, which can delay your start date if not caught early.
Request a PERM timeline if you want permanent residency
For EB-2 or EB-3 sponsorship, Microsoft must complete PERM labor certification through DOL before filing your immigrant petition. At large employers, this process often runs in parallel with your H-1B status, so raising it during offer negotiation gives you the clearest picture of your Green Card timeline.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Microsoft sponsor H-1B visas for Scientists?
Yes, Microsoft sponsors H-1B visas for Scientist roles and is one of the more active technology employers in doing so. Scientist positions typically qualify as specialty occupations under USCIS criteria given the advanced degree requirements in fields like computer science, statistics, or engineering. Both cap-subject and cap-exempt filings may apply depending on your situation and the team you're joining.
How do I apply for Scientist jobs at Microsoft?
Applications go through Microsoft's careers portal at careers.microsoft.com. For roles where visa sponsorship is a factor, it helps to filter listings by team and confirm sponsorship availability before applying. Migrate Mate is a practical starting point, letting you browse Microsoft's open Scientist positions filtered by the specific visa types the company sponsors, so you're not spending time on roles where your status isn't supported.
Which visa types does Microsoft commonly use for Scientist roles?
Microsoft sponsors H-1B visas for most international Scientist hires, along with E-3 visas for Australian citizens and H-1B1 visas for citizens of Chile and Singapore. For Scientist roles on a path to permanent residency, Microsoft also supports EB-2 and EB-3 Green Card sponsorship, typically through the PERM labor certification process filed with DOL.
What qualifications does Microsoft expect for Scientist roles?
Most Scientist roles at Microsoft require a master's or doctoral degree in a relevant technical field, such as machine learning, computer science, statistics, or computational biology. Research publications and demonstrated expertise in a specific domain carry significant weight. For visa purposes, your degree field needs to align directly with the role's duties to satisfy USCIS specialty occupation requirements, so interdisciplinary candidates should be prepared to document that connection clearly.
How long does the visa sponsorship process take for a Scientist at Microsoft?
For H-1B cap-subject filings, you'd need to be selected in the April lottery, with an October 1 start date at the earliest, meaning the process can take six months or more from offer to authorization. Premium processing through USCIS can accelerate the petition adjudication to around 15 business days once filed. E-3 visa interviews at Australian consulates are typically scheduled within a few weeks, making that pathway considerably faster for eligible candidates.