Senior Research Engineer - AI Security
Microsoft Corporation · Redmond, WA
$119,800–$234,700from the description
Jul 9, 2026
Redmond, WA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
This role sits within a team focused on AI security for Microsoft's Copilot products, where the core work involves building and maintaining production ML systems that detect and counter threats like prompt injection and adversarial inputs. Day-to-day responsibilities span training and tuning detection models, constructing evaluation and red-teaming frameworks, integrating defenses into live services, and using telemetry to refine model performance over time. It suits engineers with a background in both ML systems and security who are comfortable bridging research prototypes and production deployment.
Senior level · 4+ years · Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA · Bachelor's required · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 1,450 people in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (data scientists). range 1,100–1,850
Applicant volume Heavy — This req sits in a large pool with little in its requirements to thin it, and auto-apply tools fire at everything in the occupation. Applying early and leading with the rare skills below is what gets read.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $168,363 (middle half $111,131–$214,996). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (8)
The role is titled 'Senior Research Engineer (Machine Learning Engineer)' at Microsoft's IC4 level, which maps to Senior on the standard engineering ladder.
The required qualifications gate on a Bachelor's degree in CS or related field AND 4+ years of technical engineering experience with coding — or equivalent experience. Because the JD offers 'equivalent experience' as an alternative to the degree, the degree requirement is set to Bachelors (the stated minimum when a degree is pursued); however, the 'or equivalent experience' clause means candidates without a degree are not strictly excluded.
The coding-language requirement lists C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, and Python as examples ('including, but not limited to'); Python is named as the primary skill with the others captured as alternatives since the JD treats them interchangeably.
The 4+ years of ML/production systems experience and all other technical qualifications (adversarial testing, ML pipelines, LLMs, prompt injection, distributed systems, cloud) appear exclusively under 'Preferred Qualifications', so they are marked as preferred.
The role is classified as 15-2051 (Data Scientists) because its primary day-to-day work centers on building, training, and evaluating ML/detection models and evaluation frameworks — but 15-1252 (Software Developers) is a genuine runner-up given the strong emphasis on production system engineering, deployment, and on-call duties.
The compensation range of $119,800–$234,700/year is the standard US range; a higher range of $160,200–$261,000/year applies to the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City metro areas.
No specific security clearance is required; the posting mentions a Microsoft Cloud Background Check, which is an internal employment screening, not a US government clearance gate.
Location is inferred as Microsoft's Redmond/Seattle headquarters based on the company and role context; the posting does not explicitly state a city but lists US-wide compensation ranges.
Read the full posting
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