Senior Data Scientist - CTJ - Poly

Microsoft has an exciting opportunity for a Senior Data Scientist in the Cloud+AI Silver Team. This team will be responsible for compiling, deploying, and operating in a Secure Work Area, including the infrastructure for collaboration within an air gapped environment. 

In this role, you will have the opportunity to collaborate with engineers who enable a broad set of Azure services to be consumed by internal and external customers in a highly secure and regulated industry. We are looking for high-energy, creative modeling geeks who are willing to work in a dynamic environment to solve real life engineering problems, leveraging data science techniques. You will enjoy and be successful in this role if you are curious and willing to challenge the status quo and produce data driven solutions to ambiguous problems. 

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.

Responsibilities

Business Understanding and Impact

· Understands problems facing projects and is able to leverage knowledge of data science to be able to uncover important factors that can influence outcomes on specific products. Describes the primary objectives of the team from a business perspective. Produces a project plan to specify necessary steps required for completion. Assesses current situation for resources, risks, contingencies, requirements, assumptions, and constraints. Coaches less experienced engineers in standards and best practices. Uses his or her understanding of organizational dynamics, interrelationships among teams, schedule constraints, and resource constraints to effectively influence partners to take action on insights. Understands business strategy briefings and articulates data driver strategies for specific industries or cross-industry functions, such as: Sales/Marketing, Operations, and new Data Monetization Schemes. Engages business stakeholders to capture and shape their thinking on data-driven methods applicable to their value chain. Leads customer conversations to understand, define, and solve business problems.

Data Preparation and Understanding

· Acquires data necessary for successful completion of the project plan. Proactively detects changes and communicates to senior leads. Develops useable data sets for modeling purposes. Contributes to ethics and privacy policies related to collecting and preparing data by providing updates and suggestions around internal best practices. Contributes to data integrity/cleanliness conversations with customers.

Modeling and Statistical Analysis

· Leverages knowledge of machine learning solutions (e.g., classification, regression, clustering, forecasting, NLP, image recognition, etc.) and individual algorithms (e.g., linear and logistic regression, k-means, gradient boosting, autoregressive integrated moving average [ARIMA], recurrent neutral networks [RNN], long short-term memory [LSTM] networks) to identify the best approach to complete objectives. Understands modeling techniques (e.g., dimensionality reduction, cross validation, regularization, encoding, assembling, activation functions) and selects the correct approach to prepare data, train and optimize the model, and evaluate the output for statistical and business significance. Understands the risks of data leakage, the bias/variance tradeoff, methodological limitations, etc. Writes all necessary scripts in the appropriate language: T-SQL, U-SQL, KQL, Python, R, etc. Constructs hypotheses, designs controlled experiments, analyzes results using statistical tests, and communicates findings to business stakeholders. Effectively communicates with diverse audiences on data quality issues and initiatives. Understands operational considerations of model deployment, such as performance, scalability, monitoring, maintenance, integration into engineering production system, stability. Develops operational models that run at scale through partnership with data engineering teams. Coaches less experienced engineers on data analysis and modeling best practices. Develops an understanding of the Microsoft toolset in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) (e.g., Azure Machine Learning, Azure Cognitive Services, Azure Databricks). Breaks down complex statistics and machine learning topics into manageable topics to explain to customers. Helps the Solution Architect and provides guidance on model operationalization that is built into the project approach using existing technologies, products and solutions, as well as established patterns and practices.

Evaluating for Insight and Impact

· Understands relationship between selected models and business objectives. Ensures clear linkage between selected models and desired business objectives. Assesses the degree to which models meet business objectives. Defines and designs feedback and evaluation methods. Coaches and mentors less experienced engineers as needed. Presents results and findings to senior customer stakeholders.

Industry and Research Knowledge/Opportunity Identification

· Uses business knowledge and technical expertise to provide feedback to the engineering team to identify potential future business opportunities. Develops a better understanding of work being done on team, and the work of other teams to propose potential collaboration efforts. Coaches and provides support to teams to execute strategy. Leverages capabilities within existing systems. Shares knowledge of the industry through conferences, white papers, blog posts, etc. Researches and maintains deep knowledge of industry trends, technologies, and advances. Actively contributes to the body of thought leadership and intellectual property (IP) best practices.

Coding and Debugging

· Writes efficient, readable, extensible code from scratch that spans multiple features/solutions. Develops technical expertise in proper modeling, coding, and/or debugging techniques such as locating, isolating, and resolving errors and/or defects. Understands the causes of common defects and uses best practices in preventing them from occurring. Collaborates with other teams and leverages best practices from those teams into work of their own team. Mentors and guides less experienced engineers in better understanding coding and debugging best practices. Builds professional-grade documents for knowledge transfer and deployment of predictive analytic models. Leverages technical proficiency of big-data software engineering concepts, such as Hadoop Ecosystem, Apache Spark, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), Docker, Delta Lake, MLflow, AML, and representational state transfer (REST) application programming interface (API) consumption/development.

Business Management

· Collaborates with end customer and Microsoft internal cross-functional stakeholders to understand business needs. Formulates a roadmap of project activity that leads to measurable improvement in business performance metrics over time. Influences stakeholders to make solution improvements that yield business value by effectively making compelling cases through storytelling, visualizations, and other influencing tools. Exemplifies and enforces team standards related to bias, privacy, and ethics.

Customer/Partner Orientation

· Applies a customer-oriented focus by understanding customer needs and perspectives, validating customer perspectives, and focusing on broader customer organization/context. Promotes and ensures customer adoption by delivering model solutions and supporting relationships. Works with customers to overcome obstacles, develops tailored and practical solutions, and ensures proper execution. Builds trust with customers by leveraging interpretability and knowledge of Microsoft products and solutions. Helps drive realistic customer expectations, including information about the limitations of their data.

 Embody our culture and values.

Qualifications

Required/Minimum Qualifications:

• Doctorate in Data Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Econometrics, Economics, Operations Research, Computer Science, or related field AND 1+ year(s) data-science experience (e.g., managing structured and unstructured data, applying statistical techniques and reporting results)
  • OR Master's Degree in Data Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Econometrics, Economics, Operations Research, Computer Science, or related field AND 3+ years data-science experience (e.g., managing structured and unstructured data, applying statistical techniques and reporting results)
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Data Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Econometrics, Economics, Operations Research, Computer Science, or related field AND 5+ years data-science experience (e.g., managing structured and unstructured data, applying statistical techniques and reporting results)
  • OR equivalent experience.

Other Requirements:

Security Clearance Requirements: Candidates must be able 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:   

• The successful candidate must have an active U.S. Government Top Secret Clearance with access to Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) based on a Single Scope Background Investigation (SSBI) with Polygraph. Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. Failure to maintain or obtain the appropriate U.S. Government clearance and/or customer screening requirements may result in employment action up to and including termination.
• Clearance Verification: This position requires successful verification of the stated security clearance to meet federal government customer requirements. You will be asked to provide clearance verification information prior to an offer of employment.
• Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.   
• Citizenship & Citizenship Verification: This position requires verification of U.S. citizenship due to citizenship-based legal restrictions. Specifically, this position supports United States federal, state, and/or local United States government agency customer and is subject to certain citizenship-based restrictions where required or permitted by applicable law. To meet this legal requirement, citizenship will be verified via a valid passport, or other approved documents, or verified US government Clearance

Additional or Preferred Qualifications:

• Doctorate in Data Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Econometrics, Economics, Operations Research, Computer Science, or related field AND 3+ years data-science experience (e.g., managing structured and unstructured data, applying statistical techniques and reporting results)
  • OR Master's Degree in Data Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Econometrics, Economics, Operations Research, Computer Science, or related field AND 5+ years data-science experience (e.g., managing structured and unstructured data, applying statistical techniques and reporting results)
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Data Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Econometrics, Economics, Operations Research, Computer Science, or related field AND 7+ years data-science experience (e.g., managing structured and unstructured data, applying statistical techniques and reporting results))
  • OR equivalent experience.

Data Science IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $112,000 - $218,400 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 $145,800 - $238,600 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

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until May 8, 2024

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances.  We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.