Researcher - Agentic AI

Microsoft
Redmond, United States of America
15 days ago

Role details

Contract type
Permanent contract
Employment type
Full-time (> 32 hours)
Working hours
Regular working hours
Languages
English
Experience level
Senior
Compensation
$ 235K

Job location

San Francisco, United States of America

Tech stack

Artificial Intelligence
Natural Language Processing
Reinforcement Learning
Deep Learning
Virtual Agents
Data Pipelines

Job description

As a Senior Researcher - Agentic AI, you will play a crucial role in modeling agentic intelligence: developing agents that learn to self-correct, specialize and collectively improve through self-play as well as interaction. The role spans research on recursive self-improvement using self-generated data, adaptive coordination and delegation across multiple models, continual learning without catastrophic forgetting, human-AI collaboration for long-horizon tasks, and autonomous skill acquisition driven by interaction-identified gaps.

This role encompasses the full research-to-deployment spectrum, requiring an active focus on building robust evaluation frameworks and high-fidelity synthetic data pipelines. You will also be instrumental in refining the underlying architectures to ensure agentic systems scale effectively in complex environments.

Environment & Focus

Researchers in the AI Frontiers lab work in a vibrant, multidisciplinary environment with access to large-scale pipelines and evaluation environments, the ability to ground research in real-world product scenarios, and an open publication policy designed to share breakthroughs in agentic autonomy with the global research community.

Our current research focuses on the intersection of self-improving systems and multi-agent reasoning, specifically exploring how recursive improvement, adaptive coordination, and autonomous skill acquisition can enable agents to continuously evolve through interaction without losing prior capabilities.

#MSR #Research

At Microsoft, our mission-to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more-guides how we partner with customers to deliver trusted, impactful solutions. With a growth mindset culture, we innovate responsibly and measure success by shared progress-people, teams, and customers. Join us to do meaningful work that changes the world and helps shape what's next for everyone

Responsibilities

  • As a Senior Researcher in the AI Frontiers lab, you will perform cutting-edge research in collaboration with other researchers, engineers, and product groups.

  • As a member of a world-class research organization, you will be a part of research breakthroughs in the field and will be given an opportunity to realize your ideas on products and services used worldwide.

Requirements

  • Doctorate in relevant field
  • OR Master's Degree in relevant field AND 3+ years related research experience
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in relevant field AND 4+ years related research experience
  • OR equivalent experience., * Research record demonstrated by public artifacts like models, tools, code in AI space or publications at the following conferences: NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, NAACL, COLM
  • Expertise in the technical scaling of models and a commitment to engineering excellence, including the development of generalized code and robust research infrastructure.
  • Experience publishing academic papers as a lead author or essential contributor in the field of Artificial Intelligence, deep learning, natural language processing and/or reinforcement learning.
  • Experience participating in a top conference in relevant research domain (i.e. organizing a workshop, hackathon, community engagement/relations).
  • Demonstrable ability to define an ambitious, original research agenda
  • Ability to collaborate, communicate effectively, and technically lead multi-disciplinary team.
  • Keen interest in real-world applications and impact.

Research 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.

About the company

Microsoft is a global technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. We develop, license, and support a wide range of software products, services, and devices that help individuals and businesses realize their full potential.

Our flagship products include the Microsoft 365 productivity cloud, Windows operating system, Azure cloud platform, and Dynamics 365 business applications. We are also a leader in areas such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, developer tools, and gaming through Xbox and Game Pass.

With operations in more than 190 countries and over 220,000 employees worldwide, Microsoft is committed to responsible innovation, inclusive economic growth, and sustainability. We work closely with governments, industries, and communities to ensure that technology serves the public good and helps address some of the world’s most pressing challenges.

As we celebrate our 50th anniversary in 2025, we continue to look forward—investing in AI, cloud, and quantum computing to shape the future of work, education, and society at large scale.

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