Principal Data Scientist - FDE

Principal Data Scientist - FDE

United States, Multiple Locations, Multiple Locations

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Job description

Company and benefits

Job number

200044285

Date posted

Oct 20, 2026

Work site

0 days / week in-office – remote

Travel

Less than 25%

Profession

Research, Applied, & Data Sciences

Discipline

Data Science

Role type

Individual Contributor

Employment type

Full-Time

Overview

In the Microsoft Frontier Company Engineering team, you won’t just build software; you’ll deliver real outcomes for some of the world’s most complex organizations.

We are a global team of world-class engineers who have been working in a Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) model for more than a decade, embedding directly within customer teams to solve their toughest challenges, side-by-side, and shipping production-ready solutions in days, not months.

As a Principal Data Scientist, you will help transform how organizations use data, developing models, running experiments, and driving evidence-based decisions that have measurable business impact. You’ll work in small, multidisciplinary crews alongside engineers, product managers, and domain experts, owning the full lifecycle from data discovery through to deployed solutions.

Our work is powered by AI, applying the mindset and tooling across the entire development lifecycle to move from idea to production in days while maintaining the highest standards of security, quality, and trust.

This role offers the opportunity to:

Work with messy, real-world datasets and turn them into scalable, production-ready solutions

Run experiments that directly influence business strategy and customer outcomes

Collaborate with leading global organizations across industries

Apply the latest advancements in AI and data science to solve problems at scale

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

You will oversee acquisition of the data sets necessary for your project delivery and ensure data is properly formatted and described. You will address any gaps in current data sets, and drive ethics and privacy discussions around data collection and preparation.

You will evaluate your team’s models using metrics tied to genuine business outcomes and recommend improvements as necessary, drive best practices for models, and develop operational models that run at scale. You’ll also conduct thorough reviews of data analysis and modeling techniques and identify and invent new evaluation methods.

You will research and maintain a deep knowledge of the industry, including trends and technologies, so that you can identify strategy opportunities and contribute to thought leadership in best practices. You’ll also write extensible code that spans multiple features and develops expertise in proper debugging techniques.

You will define business, customer, and solution strategy goals, and partner with other teams to identify and explore new opportunities. You’ll also commit to a customer-oriented focus by acknowledging their needs and offering customer pragmatic solutions that align with their data capabilities.

As the expert data scientist, you will also coach engineers and cross-disciplinary partners in data science best practices and scale knowledge within the cross discipline team.

Qualifications

Required/minimum qualifications

Doctorate in Data Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Econometrics, Economics, Operations Research, Computer Science, or related field AND 3+ years data-science experience (e.g., managing structured and unstructured data, applying statistical techniques and reporting results) OR Master's Degree in Data Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Econometrics, Economics, Operations Research, Computer Science, or related field AND 5+ years data-science experience (e.g., managing structured and unstructured data, applying statistical techniques and reporting results) OR Bachelor's Degree in Data Science,

Mathematics, Statistics, Econometrics, Economics, Operations Research, Computer Science, or related field AND 7+ years data science experience (e.g., managing structured and unstructured data, applying statistical techniques and reporting results) OR equivalent experience.

Other Requirements

Microsoft is unable to sponsor a work visa for this role due to the nature of the role’s job duties.

Additional or preferred qualifications

Doctorate in Data Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Econometrics, Economics, Operations Research, Computer Science, or related field AND 5+ years data-science experience (e.g., managing structured and unstructured data, applying statistical techniques and reporting results) OR Master's Degree in Data Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Econometrics, Economics, Operations Research, Computer Science, or related field AND 8+ years data-science experience (e.g., managing structured and unstructured data, applying statistical techniques and reporting results) OR Bachelor's Degree in Data Science,

Mathematics, Statistics, Econometrics, Economics, Operations Research, Computer Science, or related field AND 12+ years data-science experience (e.g., managing structured and unstructured data, applying statistical techniques and reporting results) OR equivalent experience.

Experience partnering directly with customers or internal stakeholders to deliver solutions end-to-end.

3+ years customer-facing, project-delivery experience, professional services, and/or consulting experience.

Comfortable with travel up to 25% (role dependent)

#FDE

Data Science IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $274,800 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 $188,000 - $304,200 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: