Applied AI Lead/Senior Applied AI Lead
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Sep 25, 2026. First seen by Alion on Aug 27, 2026.
We are hiring both an Applied AI Lead & a Senior Applied AI Lead
At Microsoft, we're building a modern, AI-forward marketing organization that learns faster, activates smarter, and drives measurable impact. We blend human creativity with AI-powered systems to build a bold, coherent brand at scale, prioritizing outcomes over outputs and uniting disciplines around the customer. Microsoft's commercial brand is one of our most valuable assets, and this role helps ensure it shows up as an advantage that customers experience at every touchpoint.
The Commercial Content Systems team builds AI tools that change how Microsoft's commercial brand organization works. We support key groups that work together to shape how our customers experience the Microsoft commercial brand: customer marketing, creative design studio, brand studio, and social & creative. The team is small, senior, and still early, so the person in this role will have real influence over how we build. The agents we ship are used by more than 20 people across those groups for their everyday work.
As the Applied AI Lead/Senior Applied AI Lead, you take working prototypes and get them ready for production. People on our team and across the brand organization come up with agents they want built, and you turn those ideas into solutions that are secure, reliable, and easy to support. Once an agent is live, you keep owning it as more people start to use it. Most prototypes never reach everyday use, because the difficult work starts after the demo looks good, and that is the work this role is about. It is a strong fit if you like getting agents in front of the people who will use them, seeing how they do once people depend on them, and fixing what does not work.
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
- Take each agent from a working prototype to something running in production. Set up a repeatable way to get there, and confirm it meets our bar for reliability, support, security, and Responsible AI before it ships.
Build the agents required for new systems we’re implementing. Prototype when it helps but spend most of your time making what we build ready for production and maintaining it with ongoing governance and support.
Grow the agents we run from a few users to all users involved in a given system, and own the bug fixes, new features, and daily reliability of everything that is live.
Set up the evaluation and monitoring that show how our agents are doing on quality, cost, and usage, and that catch problems before users run into them.
Create simple, reusable patterns and starter templates so the team can build production-ready agents faster and more consistently.
Work with the data engineering, marketing engineering, and Responsible AI teams to connect agents to the systems and workflows where people do their work.
Keep track of how agent models and tools are changing, and bring what is useful back to the team.
We value diverse perspectives and believe that solutions come from teams where everyone can contribute, learn, and grow.
Qualifications
Required/minimum qualifications
Bachelor's Degree in Business, Marketing, Communications, Finance, Engineering, or related field AND 2+ years of marketing operations, program management, project management, or related experience OR equivalent experience.
Additional or preferred qualifications
Demonstrated experience taking AI/LLM or agent-based solutions from prototype into production and owning them there.
Production-grade programming experience (e.g., Python) and fluency with a major cloud platform (Azure preferred).
Hands-on experience with modern LLM application patterns: agent orchestration, tool/function calling, RAG, prompt/context engineering, and evaluation.
Experience with the Microsoft AI stack: Azure AI Foundry, Copilot Studio, M365 Copilot agents, and/or Model Context Protocol (MCP).
Experience building evaluation harnesses and production observability/tracing for LLM systems using modern, approved AI tooling.
Experience with AI safety, guardrails, and Responsible AI in production.
Experience integrating AI into enterprise systems (auth/SSO, data pipelines, compliance/data-residency).
Background in marketing, creative, or content-production environments.
A track record of production evidence: specific agents you shipped, the integration complexity you navigated, and the users who relied on your work.
Marketing Technology IC3 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $86,100 - $169,800 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 $113,300 - $187,400 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
Marketing Technology IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $106,400 - $203,600 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 $137,600 - $222,600 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
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.