Senior Research Scientist - Frontier Company
£74,700 - £122,600 per year
Key Skills
Job Description
The AI Transformation team within Microsoft Frontier Company is reimagining how the company operates in the age of AI. We work across the business to transform critical end-to-end workflows, bringing people, AI agents, and systems together to create fundamentally new ways of working.
Our team is multidisciplinary, including design, applied AI, engineering, program leadership, and business transformation to move rapidly from opportunity to working solution. We operate with a builder mindset: hands-on, highly collaborative, comfortable with ambiguity, and biased toward action. Our goal is not simply to add AI to existing processes, but to build AI-native operating models and reusable solutions that improve how Microsoft Frontier Company works and accelerate transformation at scale.
We are hiring research scientists to set the questions, build the evidence and share what we learn about the business and human experience of agentic transformation. Working within our multidisciplinary team, alongside design, applied AI, engineering, program leadership and business transformation, and with partners across the business, to study how agents are changing work, roles, judgement and decision-making. The findings will directly inform how we design human and AI systems, helping teams build agents, workflows and operating models that improve both business outcomes and people's experience of work. We also share what we learn so that customers and industries navigating the same shifts can benefit.
Responsibilities
Research direction and emerging questions
Develop and refine research questions within agreed areas of enquiry focused on the business and human experience of agentic transformation, building evidence about how AI and agents are changing work, organisations, roles and ways of operating.
Identify and pursue new and consequential questions emerging from the areas you study as agentic ways of working evolve, using what the research reveals to inform further studies and contribute to new lines of enquiry that deepen our understanding of the business and human experience of an agentic world.
Research practice and evidence
Design and conduct studies within agreed areas of enquiry into agentic transformation, combining qualitative and other appropriate research approaches to understand emerging behaviours, experiences, tensions, opportunities and unintended consequences.
Apply social and behavioural science perspectives, methodological rigour and critical thinking throughout the studies you design and conduct, from how questions are framed and evidence is gathered through to how findings are interpreted and conclusions are drawn.
Design and conduct connected studies that contribute to sustained programmes of enquiry, including longitudinal and comparative research where valuable, to understand what is changing, why, and under what conditions.
Build evidence within the areas you study on how agents shape the quality of decisions and business outcomes, examining the changes in judgement, trust and accountability that usage metrics cannot capture.
Informing design and working across disciplines
Produce research that informs the design of agents, workflows and ways of working within the areas you study, giving teams evidence to shape interventions, challenge and test assumptions, and make better decisions as technology, people and operating models evolve together.
Collaborate with researchers, design, engineering, strategy, industry experts, customers and external research communities to bring different disciplines and perspectives into the studies you design and conduct, examining transformation from multiple angles.
Wider contribution and communication
Contribute evidence and insights from the areas you study to the development of research and frameworks that can be shared with customers and across industries navigating similar shifts in work and organisation.
Communicate findings from the studies you design and conduct clearly and responsibly, making complex findings useful to researchers, practitioners, leaders and customers while being explicit about the strength, limitations and implications of the evidence.
Qualifications
Required Qualifications:
Doctorate or Masters or Bachelor degree in a related field (ideally in Social Sciences, Humanities or a closely related research discipline) with equivalent research experience.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience participating in a top conference in relevant research domain.
- Sufficient technical understanding of AI, and a proven ability to collaborate with technical stakeholders.
Research Sciences 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.
Find additional benefits and pay information here:
https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/corporate-pay/united-kingdom-corporate-pay.html
Research Sciences IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across Netherlands is € 78,800.00 - € 133,300.00 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/netherlands-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.
Core Responsibilities
Conduct multidisciplinary research to understand the business and human impact of AI agentic transformation. Develop evidence-based insights to inform the design of AI systems, workflows, and operating models.
Requirements
Requires a degree in Social Sciences, Humanities, or a related research discipline. Candidates should possess strong research skills and the ability to collaborate effectively with technical stakeholders.
About Microsoft
Industry: Software Development
Company size: 10,001+ employees
Every company has a mission. What's ours? To empower every person and every organization to achieve more. We believe technology can and should be a force for good and that meaningful innovation contributes to a brighter world in the future and today. Our culture doesn’t just encourage curiosity; it embraces it. Each day we make progress together by showing up as our authentic selves. We show up with a learn-it-all mentality. We show up cheering on others, knowing their success doesn't diminish our own. We show up every day open to learning our own biases, changing our behavior, and inviting in differences. Because impact matters. Microsoft operates in 190 countries and is made up of approximately 228,000 passionate employees worldwide.