Sr Principal Researcher - Generative AI / Sr Principal Researcheress - Generative AI

Job Opportunity: Principal Researcher – Generative AI

Microsoft Research (MSR) AI Frontiers lab is excited to announce an opening for the position of Principal Researcher– Generative AI to join our innovative team in Zurich, Switzerland.

About Us

The mission of the AI Frontiers lab is to expand the Pareto frontier of Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities, efficiency, and safety through innovations in foundation models and learning agent platforms. Our projects include pioneering work on Small Language Models (e.g., Phi, Orca) and agentic AI systems (e.g., AutoGen, MagenticOne, OmniParser).

Position Overview

We are seeking a Sr. Principal Researcher – Generative AI to spearhead advancements in Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) technologies. In this pivotal role, you will lead efforts to enhance and explore the capabilities of Generative AI models, significantly impacting the development of cutting-edge technologies and providing practical solutions to real-world challenges.

Research Areas

Our ongoing research encompasses, but is not limited to, the following areas:

• Reasoning and inference-time compute strategies
• Action models for automating web and computer tasks
• Evaluation and understanding of model and agent capabilities

Our Environment

MSR offers a vibrant setting for cutting-edge, multidisciplinary research, including access to diverse real-world problems and data, opportunities for experimentation and impact, an open publication policy, and strong connections to top academic institutions worldwide.

Responsibilities

• Conduct innovative research in collaboration with fellow researchers, engineers, and product groups.
• Participate in groundbreaking research as part of a world-class team, with opportunities to bring your ideas to fruition in products and services used globally.

Qualifications

• Doctorate in Computer Science or a relevant field, complemented by several years of related research experience or equivalent expertise.
• A demonstrable research program evidenced by public artifacts such as models, tools, code in the AI space, or publications at conferences including NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, NAACL, CVPR, COLT, ECCV, ICCV, EMNLP.
• Experience with building and evaluating frontier models.
• Proven record of publishing academic papers as a lead author or significant contributor in the field of Artificial Intelligence.
• Active participation in top conferences within the relevant research domain.
• A clear ability to define an ambitious, original research agenda.
• Strong collaboration skills, effective communication, and the capacity to technically lead a multidisciplinary team.
• A keen interest in real-world applications and their impact.

Apply online using the form below. Please note that only applications matching the job profile will be considered.