Senior Research Software Engineer

Senior Research Software Engineer

The Azure Office of the CTO (AOCTO) plays a crucial role in Microsoft’s rapidly expanding business, shaping Azure’s strategic and technical direction and guiding future cloud investments. Our team supports Microsoft’s mission by acting as thought leaders and key connectors. We help remove obstacles for product teams, foster innovation, develop new ideas, and address technical shortcomings.

We are seeking a Senior Research Software Engineer to contribute to AI and security research initiatives. This position amplifies the influence and capacity of our CTO by contributing to AI and security research projects and keeping track of technical papers. In this role, you will write and maintain code for research and prototyping scenarios. Potential research areas include the behavior, robustness, and controllability of large language models, including unlearning, fingerprinting, misuse detection, and adversarial evaluation of 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.

Responsibilities

• Design and execute AI and security research initiatives from hypothesis development through experimentation, validation, and analysis, driving outcomes that contribute to academic publication and/or product integration.
• Develop and evaluate model improvement strategies through systematic experimentation and ablation, ensuring both scientific rigor and practical applicability.
• Analyze model behavior, robustness, and safety characteristics to inform technical direction, research contributions, and real-world deployment decisions.
• Maintain and optimize GPU research infrastructure, ensuring cluster reliability, performance efficiency, and adherence to security best practices to support experimentation.
• Synthesize emerging technical trends into actionable insights and collaborate across research and engineering teams to translate validated findings into high-impact outcomes.
• Conduct market, technical, and architectural research to evaluate emerging technologies. Keep up with cloud trends and share insights with the CTO and executive office. Maintain confidentiality on internal projects and initiatives not yet public.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 4+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, Python 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 Computer Science or related technical field AND 6+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, Python OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, Python OR equivalent experience.
• Understanding of AI and ML algorithms, models, and systems.
• Experience with deep learning training and inference tools, frameworks, and methods.
• Experience publishing academic papers.

Key skills/competency

• AI Research
• Security Research
• Large Language Models
• Python Programming
• GPU Infrastructure
• Machine Learning
• Deep Learning Frameworks
• Model Evaluation
• Academic Publication
• Experimentation Design