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Principal Data Scientist

Microsoft· Data Science
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Hybrid (Norway)NOK 864k - NOK 1423kfull-timePosted 4d ago

About the role

Microsoft Development Center Norway is seeking a Principal Data Scientist to set the data science direction for large-scale services, drive AI-driven user experiences, and mentor teams across the organization. The role focuses on defining strategy, evaluating intelligent services, and leading data science initiatives at global scale within the Microsoft 365 Copilot ecosystem.

Responsibilities

  • Define and drive the data science strategy and technical roadmap for a product area, identifying high-impact opportunities and aligning partners across teams and organizations.
  • Lead the design and application of advanced analytical, AI, and modelling approaches to understand user behaviour at scale, translating findings into product and platform direction.
  • Own the metrics and evaluation strategy for intelligent services, defining north-star and guardrail metrics, offline and online evaluation frameworks, and quality bars for LLM-powered experiences.
  • Set the technical direction for LLM evaluation, prompt optimisation, and fine-tuning strategies, including scalable evaluation methods.
  • Establish standards for robust, reusable, production-quality code, data pipelines, and experimentation practices, and drive adoption across teams.
  • Pioneer the use of AI-powered tools and agentic workflows to accelerate analysis and solution development, scaling these practices across the organisation.
  • Influence senior leadership decisions by framing ambiguous problems and presenting evidence-based recommendations with trade-offs.
  • Lead data strategy for your area, including data acquisition, data quality, governance, privacy, and Responsible AI compliance.
  • Lead cross-functional, multi-team initiatives with local and remote partners, resolving ambiguity and driving alignment for scalable solutions.
  • Mentor and coach data scientists and engineers, contribute to hiring, and foster a culture of scientific rigour and inclusion.
  • Represent the team’s data science work across Microsoft and externally through communities, publications, or conferences.

Qualifications

  • Bachelor’s, Master’s, or Doctorate in Data Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Econometrics, Economics, Operations Research, Computer Science, or related field with demonstrated data-science experience.
  • Strong software engineering background with practices for code quality, repository hygiene, code reviews, unit testing, documentation, CI/CD, and deployment.

Skills

Required:Data science leadershipAdvanced analytics and modeling
Nice to have:LLM evaluation and fine-tuningExperimentation designDistributed big-data systemsProgramming and ML toolsCommunication to executivesMentoring
Last updated Oct 23, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

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