Principal Applied Science Manager

12/7/2025

Lead high-impact applied science projects to improve M365 Chat and Pages experiences, managing the end-to-end process from ideation to implementation. Mentor and empower a team of applied scientists while ensuring scientific rigor and alignment with business goals.

Salary

139900 - 274800 USD

Working Hours

40 hours/week

Company Size

10,001+ employees

Language

English

Visa Sponsorship

About The Company

Every company has a mission. What's ours? To empower every person and every organization to achieve more. We believe technology can and should be a force for good and that meaningful innovation contributes to a brighter world in the future and today. Our culture doesn’t just encourage curiosity; it embraces it. Each day we make progress together by showing up as our authentic selves. We show up with a learn-it-all mentality. We show up cheering on others, knowing their success doesn't diminish our own. We show up every day open to learning our own biases, changing our behavior, and inviting in differences. Because impact matters. Microsoft operates in 190 countries and is made up of approximately 228,000 passionate employees worldwide.

About the Role

Overview

Are you passionate about shaping the future applications of AI and empowering millions of users to unlock their full potential? The Copilot Pages and Notebooks Ecosystem (CoPANE) team brings customers the best tools and experiences needed to collaborate with Copilot, agents, and their teammates to transform the way they work and achieve their goals. Imagine effortless capturing your ideas in rich, collaborative canvases, reasoning over large amounts of diverse data with ease to better collaborate and coordinate with your coworkers and seamlessly working across the M365 ecosystem in whichever way is best for you (whether through Chat or through canvas). We are looking for a Principal Applied Science Manager to build and lead a high-performing team delivering breakthrough applied machine learning and information retrieval solutions at enterprise scale. As a technical and people leader, you’ll be responsible for delivering mission-critical innovations that directly improve Copilot experiences. This is a highly impactful role requiring a mix of technical depth, strategic execution, and people management to shape the next generation of AI-powered search experiences.

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.

Responsibilities

Drive end-to-end applied science projects: From ideation and design to implementation, experimentation, and shipping, you will lead high-impact projects that directly improve M365 Chat and Pages experiences. This includes identifying search and relevance gaps, formulating innovative hypotheses, and delivering scalable solutions.
Lead and grow a high-performing applied science team: Manage, mentor, and empower a team of applied scientists—owning their technical direction, project execution, and career development. You will guide day-to-day work, ensure scientific and engineering rigor, and be accountable for the team’s output and impact.
Innovate with scientific rigor: Invent and apply cutting-edge techniques in machine learning, natural language processing, and information retrieval to address real-world challenges at enterprise scale. You will design novel approaches for improving retrieval, ranking, query understanding, and semantic search in Copilot systems.
Document, share, and amplify learnings: Promote a culture of transparency and innovation by capturing experimental results, documenting methodology, and publishing internal learnings. You’ll drive knowledge sharing that enables broader impact across the organization.
Translate business goals into scientific strategy: Partner closely with product and business stakeholders to align team efforts with high-priority objectives. You will translate ambiguous product requirements into clear, data-driven, and technically feasible directions.
Collaborate across organizations and time zones: Work cross-functionally with platform engineering teams, peer science orgs, and product managers to ensure alignment, resolve dependencies, and unblock progress. You’ll be a key bridge between applied science innovation and product delivery.

Embody our culture and values.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

Bachelor'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 Master'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 Doctorate in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 3+ years 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:

Master'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 Doctorate in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 6+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research)
- OR equivalent experience.
5+ years of people management experience.
5+ years experience creating publications (e.g., patents, libraries, peer-reviewed academic papers).
2+ years experience presenting at conferences or other events in the outside research/industry community as an invited speaker.
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, as part of a product team.
3+ years experience developing and deploying products or systems at multiple points in the product cycle from ideation to shipping.
5+ years experience developing and deploying live production systems, as part of a product team.
7+ years experience developing and deploying products or systems at multiple points in the product cycle from ideation to shipping.
1+ year(s) of people management experience.

Applied Sciences M5 - 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:
https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

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.

Key Skills

Applied ScienceMachine LearningInformation RetrievalNatural Language ProcessingStatisticsPredictive AnalyticsProject ManagementTeam LeadershipData-Driven Decision MakingCollaborationInnovationTechnical DirectionCareer DevelopmentExperimentationProduct DevelopmentResearch