Software Applied Scientist

Microsoft is a place where engineers and innovators collaborate to shape the future of technology and grow their careers beyond what is possible elsewhere. In a cloud-first, AI-driven world, we build platforms that are open, scalable, and designed to solve real business problems at global scale.

The Business Central Development Engineering team, part of Microsoft’s broader Business & Industry Copilots organization, is responsible for building and evolving Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central—one of the world’s leading SaaS ERP solutions for small and mid-sized businesses. Our team sits at the core of how modern business applications are architected, engineered, and delivered, combining deep enterprise domain knowledge with cutting-edge cloud and AI technologies.

We are looking for a Applied Scientist to join our team at a pivotal moment. This role offers a unique opportunity to help shape the future of AI-native ERP by leading the development of intelligent, agent-first capabilities embedded directly into Business Central. You will work on highly strategic initiatives that advance the vision of the autonomous enterprise, designing AI agents that reason across business data, workflows, and user intent to deliver measurable improvements in accuracy, performance, and cost efficiency.

In this role, you will drive rapid experimentation and evaluation, develop robust metrics and frameworks for assessing agent behavior, and apply advanced techniques—such as reinforcement learning and multi-step reasoning—to improve decision-making in complex enterprise scenarios. You will collaborate closely with development engineers, product managers, and partner teams to ensure solutions are secure, reliable, performant, and extensible, enabling both Microsoft and the partner ecosystem to build confidently on the Business Central platform.

The ideal candidate brings strong expertise in natural language processing and large language models, with hands-on experience in model evaluation, fine-tuning, and optimization. Experience with instruction tuning, reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), prompt and context engineering, and tool-augmented generation is highly valued. You should be comfortable working in an experimentation-driven engineering environment, using both offline and online evaluation methods to iterate quickly and improve real-world outcomes. A solid understanding of enterprise application constraints—such as correctness, compliance, performance, and trust—is essential.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As part of this team, you will contribute to a culture rooted in growth mindset, collaboration, and accountability, while building inclusive, impactful technology that helps businesses thrive in an AI-first future.

• Deliver high-impact, product-embedded AI solutions within Dynamics 365 Business Central by driving focused experimentation and applied data science initiatives that result in measurable improvements to user productivity, correctness, and business outcomes.
• Design, implement, and evolve advanced model adaptation and fine-tuning pipelines—including techniques such as Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF)—to align AI and agent behavior with real-world business workflows, user intent, and enterprise constraints.
• Own complex, end-to-end engineering and applied science initiatives, combining deep technical execution with close collaboration across development, product, and partner teams to influence feature design, quality bars, and delivery priorities.
• Build strong alignment and trust with cross-functional stakeholders through clear, actionable communication, shared problem-solving, and a pragmatic, engineering-first approach to AI integration.
• Develop and maintain robust measurement, evaluation, and experimentation frameworks tailored to AI-driven enterprise systems, enabling rapid iteration while ensuring reliability, performance, and compliance at scale.
• Actively mentor and support peers by sharing best practices, reviewing technical designs, and contributing to a collaborative, high-performance engineering culture within the Business Central organization.
• Apply AI-driven automation and tooling to streamline engineering workflows, accelerate development velocity, and improve overall team effectiveness—both within Business Central and across the broader ecosystem.

Required Qualifications: 

• Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND relevant internship experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research)
  • OR Master's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field
  • 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. 
  
  

Travel: Occasional travel (0% to 25%) may be required as part of this role. 

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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.