Researcher - Pretraining Data Team

Microsoft; City of Westminster; On-site; GBP 75,000 - 123,000; Full time

Job summary

Microsoft AI is seeking Researchers and Research Engineers to join the Pre‑training Data team in the United Kingdom. You will design and curate high‑quality datasets, develop scalable data pipelines, and assess data quality to advance frontier AI models.

Collaboration with Safety, Ethics, and Governance ensures responsible AI practices. This role emphasizes data-driven model improvement over academic publishing.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s in a technical field with strong data focus.
• Proficiency in Python and data libraries (Pandas, NumPy).
• Experience with large-scale, unstructured data and data engineering.
• Strong knowledge of statistics and exploratory data analysis (EDA).
• Experience with Spark, Ray, or Apache Beam.
• Ability to communicate technical findings to research and product teams.

Responsibilities

• Create high‑quality datasets for training and evaluation; run experiments on new datasets to assess impact.
• Develop and maintain scalable data pipelines for ingestion, processing, filtering, and annotation.
• Analyze real‑world datasets to assess quality, diversity, relevance, and identify improvements.
• 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.

Skills

Python

Data libraries

Statistics

Exploratory data analysis

Data processing frameworks

Communication of findings

Large-scale data handling

Education

Bachelor's degree in AI/CS/Data Science/Statistics/Physics/Engineering

Master's degree in AI/CS/Data Science/Statistics/Physics/Engineering

Equivalent experience

Tools

Spark

Ray

Apache Beam

Job description

In this role, you'll work at the intersection of data and innovation, collaborating with scientists, engineers, and annotators to curate, analyze, and evaluate diverse and large-scale data sources critical to model development. You will lead efforts to:

• Design and curate high-quality datasets to power frontier AI models.
• Develop novel data collection strategies.
• Improve dataset quality and integrity.
• Understand data-driven model behaviors.
• Align 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. Our focus is on research and engineering that improves the models and products we ship. Academic publishing is not a priority for this role.

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 ingestion, processing, filtering, and annotation.
• Analyze real‑world 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.

Requirements

• Bachelor's Degree in AI, Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Physics, Engineering, or related technical discipline AND 4+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, Python and common data libraries (Pandas, NumPy, etc.)
• OR equivalent experience., Bachelor's Degree in AI, Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Physics, Engineering, or related technical discipline AND 10+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, Python and common data libraries (Pandas, NumPy, etc.)
• OR Master's Degree in AI, Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Physics, Engineering, or related technical discipline AND 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, Python and common data libraries (Pandas, NumPy, etc.)
• OR equivalent experience.
• 2+ years of experience in data analysis or data engineering, including work with large-scale datasets that are unstructured or semi-structured.
• Proficiency in statistics and exploratory data analysis methods.
• Familiarity with data processing frameworks such as Spark, Ray, or Apache Beam.
• Ability to communicate technical findings clearly to research and product teams.

Software Engineering IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across United Kingdom is £ 74,700.00 - £ 122,600.00 per year. Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation.

Microsoft AI is looking for Researchers and Research Engineers to join our Pre‑training Data team and help train the world's most capable AI frontier models, pushing the boundaries of scale, performance and product deployment. The Pre‑Training team at Microsoft AI tackles some of the most challenging problems in deep learning at scale. As a team, we will deliver one of the best foundation models in the world, forming the foundation of many initiatives across Microsoft AI.