AI Research Engineer II

Overview Security represents the most critical priorities for our customers in a world awash in digital threats, regulatory scrutiny, and estate complexity. Microsoft Security aspires to make the world a safer place for all. We want to reshape security and empower every user, customer, and developer with a security cloud that protects them with end to end, simplified solutions. The Microsoft Security organization accelerates Microsoft’s mission and bold ambitions to ensure that our company and industry is securing digital technology platforms, devices, and clouds in our customers’ heterogeneous environments, as well as ensuring the security of our own internal estate. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world. Security is one of the most critical priorities for our customers in a world of increasing digital threats, regulatory complexity, and rapidly evolving attack surfaces. Microsoft Security is on a mission to make the world a safer place by delivering end‑to‑end, AI‑powered protection across identities, devices, applications, and data. Within Microsoft Security, the Identity Security organization is responsible for protecting billions of users from account compromise, fraud, and abuse across Microsoft Entra ID and Microsoft Account (MSA) ecosystems. Our team sits at the center of this mission, building large-scale AI systems and intelligent agents that detect, investigate, and prevent malicious activity across authentication and identity flows. We are now investing heavily in next-generation AI capabilities, including GenAI-powered agents, retrieval systems, and intelligent decisioning platforms, to modernize how security workflows operate. These systems enable real-time reasoning over identity signals, automated investigation of risky activity, and intelligent responses to emerging threats. We are hiring an AI Research Engineer II  to join this effort. In this role, you will work at the intersection of applied research and engineering, designing and building production AI systems that combine large language models, traditional machine learning, and agent-based architectures. You will help translate cutting-edge AI concepts into real-world systems that power security detections and automated workflows at global scale. 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 Design and build GenAI-powered agents that reason over signals, retrieve knowledge, and take intelligent actions to support complex workflows Build AI systems with RAG, prompt engineering, and tool-using agents that handle multi-step workflows. Build and integrate agent frameworks and AI services that enable reasoning, planning, and task execution Apply traditional machine learning techniques (e.g., classification, anomaly detection, ranking) alongside LLM-based systems to improve overall system performance Prototype and iterate on novel AI approaches, translating emerging research into practical production systems Implement context engineering, structured outputs, and guardrails to improve system reliability and consistency Develop and deploy production-grade AI systems, ensuring scalability, performance, and resilience Design and execute evaluation frameworks to measure: Groundedness Relevance and correctness Model and system performance (precision, recall, etc.) Continuously improve systems through offline experimentation and production monitoring Prototype and deliver advanced capabilities such as: Multi-agent orchestration Stateful reasoning and memory Context-aware decision systems Collaborate with partner teams and researchers to bring new AI capabilities into production Incorporate safe and responsible AI practices, including mitigating hallucinations, misuse, and prompt injection risks Qualifications Required Qualifications: Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 2+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research) OR Master's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 1+ year(s) related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research) OR Doctorate in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field OR equivalent experience. Other Requirements: 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 background and Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter. Preferred Qualifications: Experience building AI agents or multi-agent systems Experience translating research ideas into production systems Experience deploying GenAI systems in production environments Familiarity with: Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Foundry, or similar platforms Agent frameworks or orchestration systems Experience designing evaluation frameworks and metrics for AI systems Knowledge of: AI safety and responsible AI practices Prompt injection and security risks in LLM systems Experience working on security, identity, fraud, or risk-based systems #MSFTSecurity, #AI #ConditionalAccess #GenAI #ZeroTrust Applied Sciences IC3 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $100,600 - $199,000 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 $131,400 - $215,400 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. Insights from previous hires Top skills: Machine Learning Common previous titles: Senior Data Scientist, Scientist II, Software Engineer, Senior Scientist, Research Engineer, Scientist, Engineer Senior, Software Engineering, Senior Data Engineer