Role overview

About this role

Overview

We are seeking Data Research Engineers to join our Multimodal team, where we are building the next generation of foundation models across vision, language, audio, and beyond. If you are passionate about exploring, designing, and building high-quality datasets to drive frontier AI models, this role is for you.

At Microsoft AI, data is at the heart of innovation—and in this role, you will collaborate closely with scientists, engineers, and annotators to curate, analyse, and evaluate diverse multimodal data sources critical to model development. You’ll lead efforts in developing novel data collection strategies, improving dataset quality, understanding data-driven model behaviours, and aligning datasets with ethical and societal values.

This is a cross-disciplinary, high-impact role ideal for engineers who want to push the boundaries of what AI can learn from data, especially in multimodal contexts.

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

Create high-quality datasets for training and evaluation; run experiments on new datasets (data ablations) to assess their impact and determine the most effective data
Develop and maintain scalable data pipelines for multimodal ingestion, pre-processing, filtering, and annotation
Analyse real-world multimodal datasets to assess quality, diversity, relevance, and identify areas for improvement
Build lightweight tools and workflows for dataset auditing, visualization, and versioning
Collaborate with Safety, Ethics, and Governance teams to ensure datasets meet standards for quality, privacy, and responsible AI practices

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

Bachelor's Degree in AI, Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Physics, Engineering, or a related technical field AND technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, Python and common data libraries (Pandas, NumPy, etc.)
OR equivalent experience
Experience in data analysis or data engineering
Proficiency in statistics and exploratory data analysis methods
Ability to communicate technical findings effectively to research and product teams

Preferred Qualifications:

Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, Python and common data libraries (Pandas, NumPy, etc.)
Familiarity with data processing frameworks such as Spark, Ray, Apache Beam
Experience working with large-scale, real-world datasets that are unstructured or semi-structured

Software Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across United Kingdom is £ 93,500.00 - £ 161,800.00 per year. Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation.

Find additional benefits and pay information here:https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/corporate-pay/united-kingdom-corporate-pay.html

Software Engineering IC6 - The typical base pay range for this role across United Kingdom is £ 119,100.00 - £ 178,700.00 per year. Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation.

Find additional benefits and pay information here:https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/corporate-pay/united-kingdom-corporate-pay.html

Software Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across Switzerland is CHF 183,800.00 - CHF 309,700.00 per year. Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation.

Find additional benefits and pay information here:https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/corporate-pay/switzerland-corporate-pay.html

Software Engineering IC6 - The typical base pay range for this role across Switzerland is CHF 233,600.00 - CHF 350,400.00 per year. Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation.

Find additional benefits and pay information here:https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/corporate-pay/switzerland-corporate-pay.html

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.