Applied Science PhD Internship Opportunities

Start Date: July 2026

Contract Type: Internship (40hrs/week)Duration: 12-weeks

Location: London

Come build community, explore your passions and do your best work at Microsoft with thousands of University interns from every corner of the world. This opportunity will allow you to bring your aspirations, talent, potential—and excitement for the journey ahead. 
 
The Microsoft Search, Assistant, and Intelligence (MSAI) team leads the development of cutting-edge AI solutions for Microsoft 365 Copilot, bringing natural language understanding and intelligent search capabilities to the productivity tools used by millions every day. 

As an Applied Science PhD Intern at Microsoft, you will be at the forefront of technological innovation, working collaboratively to bring research to life in our products and services. You will contribute directly to the evolution of Microsoft 365 Copilot, working on advanced search and recommendation systems powered by large language models (LLMs). You’ll be part of a team that transforms how users interact with information, helping them work smarter and faster. At Microsoft, Interns work on real-world projects in collaboration with teams across the world, while having fun along the way. You’ll be empowered to build community, explore your passions and achieve your goals. This is your chance to bring your solutions and ideas to life while working on cutting-edge technology. This is a flexible work opportunity where you will be expected to work 3 days from our London Paddington office. 

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

Responsibilities

• Apply or develop state-of-the-art techniques to advance the capabilities of Microsoft 365 Copilot, with a particular emphasis on graph-based information retrieval, contextualization and personalization, LLM prompt engineering, LLM post-training, synthetic data generation, and LLM-based evaluation. 
• Gain a deep understanding of your area of research and applicable research techniques, as well as a basic knowledge of industry trends and share your knowledge with immediate team members. 
• Take an impact-driven approach to developing scalable methods that not only advance the state of the art but are also production-ready, with the goal of creating prototypes for enhancing the Microsoft 365 user experience. 
• Systematically document and analyze proposed methodologies with the aim of publishing in a highly regarded AI research venues. 
• Assist with the development of usable datasets for modeling purposes and support the scaling of feature ideation and data preparation. 

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• Currently pursuing a Doctorate Degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning or a related field. 
• Excellent problem solving and data analysis skills, with expertise in developing or applying predictive analytics, statistical modelling, data mining, or machine learning algorithms, especially at scale. 
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to simplify and explain complex ideas. 
• You must be legally authorised to work in the United Kingdom to be eligible for this role (Legally authorised = has citizenship or has been granted a valid visa or work permit)
• Fluency in English

Preferred Qualifications

• A publication record in top AI venues. 
• Experience in the application of Language Models and Transformers.  

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.