Applied Scientist II

Security represents the most critical priorities for our customers in a world awash in digital threats, regulatory scrutiny, and estate complexity. Microsoft Security aspires to make the world a safer place for all. We want to reshape security and empower every user, customer, and developer with a security cloud that protects them with end to end, simplified solutions. The Microsoft Security organization accelerates Microsoft’s mission and bold ambitions to ensure that our company and industry is securing digital technology platforms, devices, and clouds in our customers’ heterogeneous environments, as well as ensuring the security of our own internal estate. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world.

Do you have a passion for data, machine learning and cybersecurity Do you want to apply it to protecting people against cybercriminals at scale Would you like to work with and act as a technical mentor to a diverse, talented, and highly collaborative team of data scientists and applied researchers Would it make you proud to tell your friends and family that the work you do protects a billion people across the globe The AI and Data Sciences team in Microsoft 365 Security and Compliance organization is looking for an experienced, energetic, and hands-on Data Scientist. Intelligence is at the core of the value we provide to customers in the form of our M365 Security and Compliance suite of products and services. It drives the out-of-the-box protection capabilities that customers of all sizes and skillsets rely upon to manage their organizations; it provides the context and insight for customers to understand their risk and required actions; it demonstrates Microsoft’s expertise which builds customer trust and increased market share, further improving our intelligence capabilities. Security & Compliance research is the engine that pioneers, delivers and sustains this intelligence as well as ensuing capabilities. Our security group focuses on protecting customers against social engineering attacks such as phishing across our browsers, email, and chat – and within this charter, web scale machine learning is a fundamental part of how we protect customers, with an advanced M365 Defender suite. We are seeking an experienced an applied scientist to build and expand our cross-service, signal-based protections using state-of-the art techniques spanning the areas of supervised and unsupervised machine learning. We are looking for candidates who are passionate about leading and pushing forward the cutting-edge technology and the state-of-the-art solutions.

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

• Invent and build AI‑driven agents and systems that transform how we analyze entities, telemetry, and behavioral data—pushing the boundaries of modern social engineering threat detection and protection.
• Turn deep analysis into decisive action by generating insights that drive durable detection and prevention strategies across the full attack kill chain, exposing protection gaps and directly influencing product improvements.
• Operate with high autonomy and ownership, defining the right technical approach and designing, improving, or creating novel data science and ML models that deliver measurable impact to Microsoft products and services.
• Collaborate across research, engineering, and partner teams—both internal and external—to establish new partnerships and strengthen existing ones that accelerate product maturity and unlock richer insights.
• Communicate complex findings with clarity and impact, distilling results into compelling narratives through data visualizations, infographics, and written and verbal briefings for researchers, developers, and engineers.

• Bachelors/Master’s degree with relevant course work toward Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Machine Learning, Data Mining, and equivalent work experience.
• 3+ years of professional experience in a technical role building and deploying ML solutions at scale for real-world problems.
• Proficiency in using statistical/analysis/ML tools, defining, and implementing intelligent solutions on data.
• Experience with deep learning applied to areas such as graph learning, IR, NLP, computer vision, etc., are preferred.
• Skilled working with large data sets, using big data tools and scripting languages such as: Excel, SQL, Python, Matlab, R, C, and/or PowerBI.
• Excellent cross-group and interpersonal skills, with the ability to articulate solutions.
• Additional experience in areas like cyber security, fraud detection, would be beneficial, but not mandatory.

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.