Principal Research Scientist

The AI Transformation team within Microsoft Frontier Company is reimagining how the company operates in the age of AI. We work across the business to transform critical end-to-end workflows, bringing people, AI agents, and systems together to create fundamentally new ways of working. 

Our team is multidisciplinary, including design, applied AI, engineering, program leadership, and business transformation to move rapidly from opportunity to working solution. We operate with a builder mindset: hands-on, highly collaborative, comfortable with ambiguity, and biased toward action. Our goal is not simply to add AI to existing processes, but to build AI-native operating models and reusable solutions that improve how Microsoft Frontier Company works and accelerate transformation at scale. 

We are hiring research scientists to set the questions, build the evidence and share what we learn about the business and human experience of agentic transformation. Working within our multidisciplinary team, alongside design, applied AI, engineering, program leadership and business transformation, and with partners across the business, to study how agents are changing work, roles, judgement and decision-making. The findings will directly inform how we design human and AI systems, helping teams build agents, workflows and operating models that improve both business outcomes and people's experience of work. We also share what we learn so that customers and industries navigating the same shifts can benefit.

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. 

Research direction and emerging questions 

• Co-evolve areas of enquiry and research questions focused on the business and human experience of agentic transformation, building evidence about how AI and agents are changing work, organisations, roles and ways of operating. 

• Identify new and consequential questions as agentic ways of working evolve, using what the research reveals to open new lines of enquiry and continually deepen our understanding of the business and human experience of an agentic world.  

Research practice and evidence 

• Lead and conduct research into agentic transformation, shaping the research approach across related studies and combining qualitative and other appropriate methods to understand emerging behaviours, experiences, tensions, opportunities and unintended consequences. 

• Bring social and behavioural science perspectives, methodological rigour and critical thinking throughout the research programme, guiding how questions are framed, evidence is gathered, findings are interpreted and conclusions are drawn across related studies. 

• Develop sustained programmes of enquiry that go beyond individual studies, including longitudinal and comparative research where valuable, to understand what is changing, why, and under what conditions. 

• Build evidence on how agents shape the quality of decisions and business outcomes, examining the changes in judgement, trust and accountability that usage metrics cannot capture. 

Informing design and working across disciplines 

• Bring together evidence across related studies to inform the design of Agentic Transformation, giving teams evidence to shape interventions, challenge and test assumptions, and make better decisions as technology, people and operating models evolve together. 

• Build and sustain collaboration across researchers, design, engineering, strategy, industry experts, customers and external research communities, bringing different disciplines and perspectives together to shape and advance the research programme and examine transformation from multiple angles. 

Wider contribution and communication 

• Shape research of wider value from Microsoft’s transformation, developing evidence, frameworks and insights that can be shared with customers and across industries navigating similar shifts in work and organisation. 

• Communicate findings across the research programme clearly and responsibly, making the body of evidence useful to researchers, practitioners, leaders and customers while being explicit about its strength, limitations and implications. 

Required Qualifications:

• Doctorate in relevant field AND 3+ years related research experience
  • OR Master's Degree in relevant field AND 4+ years related research experience 
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in relevant field AND 6+ years related research experience
  • OR equivalent experience. 

Preferred Qualifications:

• Doctorate in relevant field AND 5+ years related research experience
  • OR Master's Degree in relevant field AND 8+ years related research experience
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in relevant field AND 12+ years related research experience
  • OR equivalent experience.
• Experience participating in a top conference in relevant research domain.

Research Sciences IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $274,800 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 $188,000 - $304,200 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

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.