Job: Web Search Relevance, Microsoft

Redmond, WA: Software Engineer, Web Search Relevance at Microsoft

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
Desired Skills:
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

Requirements:

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

Contact:

Heather McGough, [email protected]