The generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution ignited the need for state-of-the-art retrieval systems. These retrieval systems are used by customers to create their own Copilot-style applications that combine large language models with external data. In Azure, the go-to retrieval system for these scenarios is Azure AI Search.

We’re looking for an experienced Senior Software Engineer to join our data ingestion and augmentation team. Join us at this special point in time to help drive the next round of accelerated growth for our business by innovating our core AI cloud services. This is a rare opportunity to work on a team which delivers features to enterprise customers who are looking to productize Generative AI applications.

The data ingestion and augmentation team is primarily responsible for content understanding from customer’s unstructured data to build “intelligent indexes”. The team currently focuses on the strategy of “winning through integration” by developing connectors to crawl through customer owned data sources and ingesting that content into Azure AI Search indexes. The team specializes in enriching this content with AI/ML capabilities (such as generate vector embeddings for text and images, extract key phrases from text etc.,) and strives to enhance the data ingestion experience by adding content understanding capabilities, thereby converting a search index into an “intelligent AI search index”.

The team is responsible for pushing Azure AI Search into the forefront of serving as the memory for AI powered LLM applications, by building new representations for data that gets ingested into an AI search index – be it natural language text, vector representation of text/images as well as building relations between documents in a “knowledge graph”. We are looking to advance into a new era of multi-modal search experiences, by offering various means to ingest text, images, and audio/video content to power the next generation of copilot-style applications, doing so by tightly integrating with other Azure services such as Azure Open AI, Azure ML, Logic apps etc.,

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. In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day.

Responsibilities

• Having an understanding of the software development cycle and will use data and experiments to inform decisions.

• Write secure, reliable, scalable, and maintainable code, and then effectively debug it, test it, and support it.

• System design through well-defined interfaces across multiple components, code reviews, leveraging data/telemetry to make decisions.

• Contribute to the Microsoft ecosystem around Retrieval Augmented Generation through releasing products and services that power various generative AI applications.

• Maintain operations of live service as issues arise on a rotational, on-call basis.

• Participate in creating and sustaining a trust and effective work environment.

• Collaborating with teams both within and outside Azure AI Search and will need to be able to quickly pick up expertise in building new integration touch points.

• Embody our culture (https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/culture) and values. (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/about/corporate-values)

Qualifications

Required/Minimum

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, or related technical discipline and 4+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C++, C#, Java, or Python.

• OR equivalent experience.

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 Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Preferred/Additional

• Effective communication and collaboration skills.

• Knowledge of agile software development methodologies and tools that enable those, such as Azure DevOps, GitHub, or others.

• Background on information retrieval, vector database or large language model is a plus.

• Experience working with customers and across company boundaries.

• Experience with the development of resilient software, high-availability services.

• Deep intellectual curiosity and passion about learning new technologies.

Software Engineering 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 24, 2024.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, 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 and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations (https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/accessibility.html) .