Microsoft
Senior Principal Researcher - AI Systems Architecture
$166K–$331K
Mountain View, CA · On-site · Principal · Full-time · Posted Oct 6, 2026
- Experience
- 6+ years with a doctorate, 7+ years with a master's degree, or 9+ years with a bachelor's degree in related research; equivalent experience is also stated.
- Education
- Doctorate, Master's Degree, or Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or relevant/related field; OR equivalent experience.
About the job
Leads research and development of cross-layer AI system, memory, and hardware architectures to improve inference performance, efficiency, and infrastructure economics.
What you'll do
- Analyze AI workloads and define architectures spanning runtimes, memory systems, interconnects, and hardware.
- Drive pre-silicon exploration, modeling, feasibility analysis, and prototype evaluation of next-generation AI hardware.
- Collaborate across research and engineering, publish research, mentor contributors, and transfer concepts toward deployment.
What they ask for
- Doctorate in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or relevant field and 6+ years of related research experience; OR Master's Degree in one of those fields and 7+ years; OR Bachelor's Degree in one of those fields and 9+ years; OR equivalent experience.
Nice to have
- Experience in computer architecture, memory systems, silicon architecture, AI systems, platform design, or hardware/software co-design.
- Experience with pre-silicon architecture, memory technologies, large AI workloads, performance modeling, or cross-functional research and product engineering.
Pay
USD $165,600 - $296,400 per year (base salary); USD $220,800 - $331,200 per year (base salary)
Tools
DRAM, HBM, CXL, GPU memory systems, LLM inference, mixture-of-experts, KV-cache
AI focus
Architectures and systems for AI workloads, including inference and training, with attention to model execution, memory behavior, and accelerator platforms.
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