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Principal Applied Science Manager - Excel Team

Microsoft· Applied Sciences
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Redmond, WA$165.6k - $296.4kFull-timePosted 2w ago

About the role

Microsoft Excel is seeking a Principal Applied Science Manager to lead the science organization advancing agentic AI experiences in Excel. This leader will shape the scientific direction, evaluation strategy, and release readiness of AI agents that help millions of people complete complex spreadsheet tasks from data analysis to model building. In the first year, establish a clear Excel Agent science strategy, strengthen model and release-readiness decisions, improve evaluation systems, and build a resilient organization with clear ownership across critical research and quality workstreams.

Responsibilities

  • Lead, grow, and mentor a multidisciplinary team of researchers and applied scientists.
  • Set the research and applied-science strategy for agentic AI in Excel.
  • Drive scientific direction for agent architecture, model and tool selection, prompts, skills, planning, and human-agent collaboration.
  • Define how agent quality is measured through representative benchmarks, graders, regression suites, and multi-turn evaluations.
  • Establish release-readiness criteria for new models and agent capabilities.
  • Lead evaluation and integration of frontier foundation models, balancing quality, latency, reliability, safety, capacity, and cost.
  • Diagnose agent failures using trajectory analysis, experimentation, and customer-representative scenarios.
  • Translate research prototypes into production-ready capabilities in partnership with engineering, product management, and design.
  • Build effective operating mechanisms for model comparisons, quality reviews, research sharing, and technical decision-making.
  • Develop strong partnerships with internal model teams, research organizations, and external AI laboratories.
  • Communicate technical findings and recommendations to senior leadership.
  • Support external research engagement through publications, patents, workshops, and conferences.
  • Recruit, onboard, and develop research talent while establishing durable technical leadership across the team.

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 8+ 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 6+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research) OR Doctorate in Statistics, Econometrics, Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related field AND 5+ years related experience (e.g., statistics, predictive analytics, research) OR equivalent experience.
  • 3+ years of people management experience.

Skills

Required:Leadership and people managementStrategic planning and roadmappingAgent architecture and tool selectionEvaluation design and benchmarks

Benefits

  • Benefits and other compensation may apply. See company information for details.
Last updated Oct 9, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

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