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Microsoft

Member of Technical Staff, Principal Tech Lead Manager, Image Generation

Microsoft
onsite senior full-time $139,900 - $274,800 per year Redmond
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First indexed 24 Apr 2026

Description

We are hiring a Principal Tech Lead Manager to own and grow Copilot's image generation capabilities. This is a high-impact, high-ownership role at the intersection of frontier model integration, evaluation science, and product quality. The successful candidate will set the technical direction for image generation, lead a team of Applied AI engineers and platform engineers, and drive measurable improvements in image quality, user satisfaction, and first-run success.

Responsibilities:

  • Define and own the end-to-end technical roadmap for Copilot image generation , from prompt understanding and model integration to evaluation, quality, and reliability.
  • Establish architectural best practices for image generation pipelines, including prompt conditioning, safety filtering, multimodal grounding, and user personalization.
  • Partner with research, product, and infrastructure teams to translate long-horizon vision into executable milestones.
  • Serve as the primary technical decision-maker for model selection, integration approaches, and evaluation strategy.
  • Lead the integration, evaluation, and launch of new image generation models and capabilities into Copilot surfaces.
  • Drive improvements to first-run success rate, image quality, prompt adherence, and overall user satisfaction with generated images.
  • Build and own the feedback loop from user signals to model and prompt iteration.
  • Close the loop from production data to systematic improvements.
  • Identify and resolve failure modes in image generation including safety gaps, quality regressions, prompt misinterpretation, and accessibility issues.

Qualifications:

  • Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 6+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR equivalent experience.
  • Preferred Master's degree or PHD or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Applied Math, Statistics, or a related field.
  • 5+ years of industry experience in applied ML, AI product engineering, or related disciplines.
  • 1+ years managing a team of engineers or data scientists.
  • Demonstrated experience shipping production AI or ML systems at scale.
  • Prior experience leading or mentoring engineers, including at formal tech lead and senior IC responsibilities.
  • Hands-on experience building evaluation frameworks or quality systems for AI/ML products.
  • Track record of driving measurable quality or performance improvements through systematic iteration.
  • Direct experience with image generation models (diffusion models, GANs, multimodal models, etc.).
  • Experience building and owning hillclimbing infrastructure for generative AI.
  • Formal people management experience, including hiring and performance management.
  • Experience working on consumer AI products with high user visibility and quality bar.
  • Prior work in responsible AI for generative media, including safety filtering and content policy enforcement.
This listing is enriched and indexed by YubHub. To apply, use the employer's original posting: https://microsoft.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-principal-tech-lead-manager-image-generation/