Engineering Lead - Extreme Retrieval

About the Position

Join us to redefine information retrieval at scale!

Microsoft Research India is seeking a hands-on, ambitious, and technically strong individual contributor to lead ML codebase development and build the software engineering platform for a high-impact project specializing in large-scale machine learning for consumer and enterprise retrieval. This role sits at the intersection of research and engineering and focuses on defining the engineering foundations that enable retrieval research to be translated into reusable, extensible, and broadly adopted systems across Microsoft products and experiences. You’ll report to a Distinguished Scientist and Vice President, and work with a world-class team of researchers and engineers.

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture and long-term evolution of a shared engineering platform for retrieval systems.
• Own the shared repository and codebase for retrieval methods, driving its architecture, extensibility, engineering quality, and long-term health.
• Work with researchers and partner engineering teams to integrate new retrieval methods into a reusable, scalable, and well-structured codebase.
• Improve the developer and researcher experience through clear APIs, examples, tooling, and workflows.
• Drive integration with downstream systems and partner teams so that retrieval methods can be adopted faster and more reliably.
• Provide cross-team technical leadership, influencing engineering direction and quality standards across collaborating teams.

Requirements

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s in Computer Science, Engineering, or related fields.
• Strong software engineering skills with a proven track record of designing, building, reviewing, and maintaining high-quality code in large shared codebases.
• Significant experience owning or building shared platforms, frameworks, repositories, or ML systems used by multiple teams.
• Strong communication and cross-team collaboration skills, with the ability to drive alignment.
• High ownership, sound judgment, and the ability to independently drive ambiguous technical problems to completion.

Preferred Qualifications

• Proven ability to work with researchers, engineers, and partner teams to turn research ideas into robust engineering systems.
• Good understanding of machine learning systems and retrieval methods, such as dense, sparse, or hybrid retrieval, ranking/reranking, and evaluation metrics.
• Experience building evaluation, benchmarking, or platform infrastructure for machine learning systems.
• Familiarity with distributed systems, performance optimization, and GPU-backed ML workflows.

We Offer

• Opportunity to work at the forefront of machine learning and systems.
• Work with a team that sets the bar for rigor and impact.
• Influence how retrieval research is translated into reusable engineering systems and scaled across Microsoft products and experiences.
• Set the engineering standards, core interfaces, and evaluation framework that govern how new retrieval methods and models are built, validated, and adopted across Microsoft.
• Opportunity to present the team’s work at the senior most levels of leadership (CEO, CTO, and Board) and shape their thinking in this space.

About the Company

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.