Senior Researcher - AI Agents - Microsoft Research

Microsoft Research (MSR) AI Frontiersisinvitingapplications foraSeniorResearcher tojoin our team.

AtMSR AI Frontiers, we pursue ambitious research to advance AI in areas such as modeling, algorithms,agents, and agentic systems. We foster a vibrant environment for multidisciplinary work with anopen publication policy, close ties to leading academic institutions, and a commitment to impact beyond research. We regularlyrelease open-source models, libraries, and tools to accelerate community progress, while also working within Microsoft's ecosystem toship AI technologies across multiple products, ensuring our innovationscreate real-world value for people.

We are seeking exceptional candidates to advancethe state-of-the-art inagentic systems andecosystems.Relevant projects from our lab include agentic systems (e.g.,Magentic-UI,Magentic-One), ecosystems (e.g.,Magentic Marketplace), frameworks (e.g.,AutoGen), models (e.g.,Phi,Orca) and tools (e.g.,AgentInstruct,AutoGen Studio).

Focus areasfor this position include, but are not limited to, the following:

• AgenticSystems.Buildingstate-of-the-artagentic systems, applications, and environments.
• Agent Ecosystems.Building agent-native ecosystems (e.g., frontier firms, agentic markets) where agents can effectively collaborate alongside people and other agents.
• Advanced Agentic Capabilities.Post-training models for advanced agentic capabilities, including reinforcement learning, fine-tuning, self-play, and synthetic data generation.
• Human-Agent Interaction.Creating novel human-agent interaction techniques and experiences.
• Evaluation & Tooling.Developingevaluationbenchmarks, methods, and tooling for agentic capabilities.
• Responsible AI.Ensuring agentsoperatesafely and responsibly while delivering real value to people.

As aSenior Researcher on our team, you will work hands-on on challenging and impactful projects. You will apply your strong technical skills andexpertiseto build practical solutions to real world problems. Additionally, you will collaborate closely with other researchers and engineers across the company to amplify your impact and grow your career in a supportive and stimulating environment.

• Outcome Driven Innovation- The ability to strategically recognize and address unmet needs in industry or knowledge and to create novel, practical, and effective solutions to these unmet needs. This involves the ability to work backwards in research and development, focusing more heavily on the problem to lead to a solution rather than creating something highly original but lacking in application potential.
• Collaborative Innovation- Knowledge of others'expertiseand the ability to involve multiple players (within and outside the organization) in the creation or development of novel products, processes, or research streams.
• Problem Solving- The ability toidentifyproblems and review related information to develop and evaluate options and implement solutions.
• Decision Making- The ability to make decisions in a fast-paced, rapidly changing environment.This includes the ability to define, diagnose, anddeterminean appropriate resolution, recommendation, or decision while considering alternatives and factors (e.g., resources, costs, tradeoffs).
• Scientific Method- Knowledgeof andthe ability to use an empirical method ofacquiringknowledge. This involves careful observation, applying rigorous skepticism about what isobserved, formulating a question or hypothesis, testing the hypothesis through experimentation, drawing conclusions, reporting results, and evaluating the process and retesting the hypothesis.