Data Scientist

Overview: Data Scientist at Microsoft

Are you a data professional deeply interested in the current race in AI? Come join us! We are looking for a Data Scientist storyteller to support the IDEAS Data Science team. As translators and advisors, we help communicate the “What if” of what IDEAS Data Science has created as a “single source of truth” by connecting quantified metrics to executive action required for business, such as understanding competitive imperatives given market share across various metrics. We leverage a wide combination of data sources (1P, 3P, public, surveys, panels, etc.) and science models to produce our estimates. As a business-facing team, the interest and ability to connect product and strategy hypotheses back to data and qualitative factors is central to this role. AI is a significant focus, both as a competitive space (e.g., Copilot, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, etc.) and because we are actively integrating AI into our daily workflows.

Join over 150 data scientists on the broader horizontal IDEAs team where data science, engineering, and PM work together to support multiple business and product verticals at scale! In this role, you will both support stakeholders directly and collaborate with the broader IDEAS team to scale your solutions across Microsoft.

We play a crucial role in supporting Microsoft 365 and the Experiences + Devices group (E+D), which are central to the Company's mission to empower individuals and organizations to achieve more. Our objective is to foster a data-informed culture by equipping the Experiences + Devices group with actionable insights to guide their decisions. This initiative represents a significant opportunity to deliver impactful information that will improve operational efficiency, drive empowerment, and support Microsoft’s success in the evolving AI landscape.

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

• Be a Translator and Advisor: Leverage business understanding and consulting skills to communicate the “What if” that can influence outcomes. Your primary role is to be a “force multiplier” of data science work, connecting metrics and data findings to business actions.
• Describes the primary objectives of the team from a business perspective.
• Collaborates with internal cross-functional stakeholders to understand business needs.
• Produces a project plan to specify necessary steps required for completion.
• Assesses current situation for resources, risks, contingencies, requirements, assumptions, and constraints.
• Engages business stakeholders to capture and shape their thinking on data-driven methods.
• Leads customer conversations to understand, define, and solve business problems.
• Influences stakeholders by effectively making compelling cases through storytelling, visualizations, and other influencing tools.
• Exemplifies and enforces team standards related to bias, privacy, and ethics.
• Data Preparation and Understanding: Acquire data necessary for successful completion of the project plan. Proactively detect changes and communicate to senior leads. Develop usable data sets for modeling purposes. Contribute to ethics and privacy policies related to collecting and preparing data by providing updates and suggestions around internal best practices. Contribute to data integrity/cleanliness conversations with customers.
• Coding and Debugging: Being able to code and debug is useful but not essential. Understand the causes of common defects and use best practices in preventing them from occurring. Collaborate with other teams and leverage best practices from those teams into work of your own team.
• Customer/Partner Orientation: Apply a customer-oriented focus by understanding customer needs and perspectives. Build trust with customers by leveraging interpretability and knowledge of Microsoft products and solutions. Help drive realistic customer expectations, including information about the limitations of their data.
• Industry and Research Knowledge / Opportunity Identification: Use business knowledge and technical expertise to provide feedback to the engineering team to identify potential future business opportunities. Develop an understanding of work being done across teams to propose potential collaboration efforts. Coach and provide support to execute strategy. Leverage capabilities within existing systems.
• Modeling and Statistical Analysis: Break down complex statistics and machine learning topics into manageable topics to explain to executives / customers.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• 7+ years experience in data science, research, marketing or business-related roles OR Bachelor's Degree in Business, Marketing, Economics, Social Sciences, Statistics, or related field AND 6+ years experience in data science, research, marketing or business-related roles OR Master's Degree in Business, Marketing, Economics, Social Sciences, Statistics, or related field AND 4+ years experience in data science, research, marketing or business-related roles.
• 5+ years of hands-on research experience including designing and executing complex data-storytelling projects from start to finish.

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:

• 5+ years of Consulting experience, or 6+ years of significant corporate strategy experience or 9+ years experience in data science, research, marketing or business-related roles OR Bachelor's Degree in Business, Marketing, Economics, Social Sciences, Statistics, or related field AND 8+ years experience in data science, research, marketing or business-related roles OR Master's Degree in Business, Marketing, Economics, Social Sciences, Statistics, or related field AND 7+ years experience in data science, research, marketing or business-related roles OR Doctorate Degree in Business, Marketing, Economics, Social Sciences, Statistics, or related field AND 5+ years experience in data science, research, marketing or business-related roles.
• 5+ years experience working with decision makers to define need and scope research to answer questions.
• 5+ years creating content that conveys a simple, clear message.

Key skills/competency

• Data Storytelling
• Business Acumen
• Stakeholder Management
• Competitive Analysis
• Data Interpretation
• Strategic Advising
• Machine Learning Concepts
• Statistical Analysis
• Data Ethics
• Project Planning