Applied Scientist II (bing Places)

Microsoft Microsoft · Big Tech · Redmond, WA +2 · Applied Sciences

Applied Scientist II role on the Bing Places team, focusing on building and shipping AI/ML solutions for local search experiences. The role involves end-to-end work from problem formulation to production deployment, with a focus on LLMs, RAG, learning-to-ranking, and entity understanding. Collaboration with engineering and product partners is key, with opportunities for publications and patents.

What you'd actually do

  1. Formulate complex product and engineering problems as machine learning and AI tasks, and drive them from concept through production
  2. Design, implement, and evaluate ML‑ and LLM‑based models that improve Bing Places quality, relevance, and coverage
  3. Conduct rigorous data analysis to understand system behavior, identify opportunities, and define success metrics
  4. Prototype new modeling approaches and iterate quickly based on offline evaluation and online experimentation
  5. Own experimentation pipelines, including offline validation and large‑scale online A/B flighting

Skills

Required

  • Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 2+ years related experience
  • Master's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 1+ year(s) related experience
  • Doctorate in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field OR equivalent experience

Nice to have

  • Master’s degree or PhD in a relevant technical field
  • 4+ years of experience applying AI solutions or LLMs to real‑world systems (RAG, ranking, classification, reasoning)
  • Proven expertise in machine learning, statistical methods, and data‑driven problem solving
  • Hands‑on experience developing and evaluating models on large‑scale, real‑world datasets
  • Proficiency in Python and experience with modern ML frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX, or similar)
  • Understanding of experimentation methodologies, including offline metrics and online A/B testing
  • Ability to independently scope problems and deliver high‑quality solutions in ambiguous environments
  • Strong collaboration skills and experience working with engineering and product partners
  • Ability to clearly communicate technical concepts and trade‑offs to both technical and non‑technical audiences
  • Background in search, information retrieval, knowledge graphs, or local/entity understanding
  • Track record of publications or granted/pending patents
  • Familiarity with distributed training, model optimization, and production ML infrastructure
  • Comfort operating across the full lifecycle—from research and prototyping to production and live operations

What the JD emphasized

  • large-scale
  • real-world impact
  • production deployment
  • live flighting
  • large-scale datasets
  • production ML infrastructure

Other signals

  • LLMs
  • RAG
  • learning-to-ranking
  • entity understanding
  • local search