Microsoft Live Search is looking for experienced software engineers to join our efforts towards building the most relevant search engine. We are keenly interested in individuals with a strong research background, solid programming skills and a demonstrable ability to come up with new ideas and execute on them.

The relevance team at Microsoft Live Search builds the components that predict in a fraction of a second which of our several billion web documents will best answer a user's query. It is one of the highest impact and most technically challenging projects in the computer industry. In collaboration with Microsoft Research, we explore cutting edge techniques from statistics, information retrieval, machine learning, and computational linguistics to approach this problem. As a member of our relevance team, you will have a direct impact on the quality of our search results which in turn determine the experience of millions of users every day.

The ideal candidate will combine strong software engineering skills with a solid background in one or more of the above disciplines. Enthusiasm for reviewing the latest research, inventing new techniques, and doing rigorous experimental validation is required.

Responsibilities:

• Research on information retrieval and machine learning topics, novel search techniques
• Analysis of user queries and identifying areas of improvement
• Develop novel techniques to recognize user intent when they submit a query (e.g. when a user types “jaguar”, did they mean the car or the animal)
• Design software that improves the quality of results returned
• Collaborate with Microsoft Research on new techniques

• Deep expertise in one of information retrieval, data mining, classification, or machine learning
• Solid product development experience
• Strong track-record of coming up with novel ideas and executing on them
• Experience dealing with large data sets

• B.S./M.S. in Computer Science or equivalent. PhD is welcome.
• Extensive experience programming in C/C++ with strong OO skills.
• Exceptional problem solving and analytical skills.
• Passion to make a difference

Must currently possess legal authorization to work in the U.S.

posted by: Heather McGough