Senior Data Scientist

Senior Data Scientist

United States, Multiple Locations, Multiple Locations

Job description

Company and benefits

Job number

200062199

Date posted

Oct 22, 2026

Work site

0 days / week in-office – remote

Travel

Less than 25%

Profession

Research, Applied, & Data Sciences

Discipline

Data Science

Role type

Individual Contributor

Employment type

Full-Time

Overview

Microsoft is a company where passionate innovators come to collaborate, envision what can be, and take their careers further. This is a world of more possibilities, more innovation, more openness, and the sky is the limit of thinking in a cloud-enabled world

We are seeking a Senior Data Scientist to help design, scale, and continuously improve the analytical models that power sales quota setting and incentive programs. This role sits at the intersection of Sales Incentive Design, Data Science, Statistical Modeling, AI, and Business Strategy.

You will own and evolve quota methodologies, validate the data and assumptions behind quota-setting decisions, and partner across Finance, Plan Design, Implementation, Analytics, and business teams to translate complex financial and business objectives into scalable, explainable models.

The role combines strong quantitative and technical depth with an understanding of sales compensation, quota methodologies, forecasting, financial modeling, or sales performance management. You should be equally comfortable analyzing complex datasets, developing models and AI-enabled solutions, and explaining recommendations to business and technical stakeholders.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, and we’re dedicated to this mission across every aspect of our company. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their highly qualified contributions each day. Join us and help shape the future of the world.

What Success Looks Like?

Success in this role means delivering quota methodologies that stakeholders can trust, understand, operationalize, and defend. You will connect financial objectives and sales strategy to rigorous quantitative models while continuously improving the underlying data, methodology, and technology.

You will also help modernize how sales incentive and quota decisions are made by applying advanced analytics, automation, machine learning, and AI to improve accuracy, scalability, transparency, and business impact.

Responsibilities

The Senior Data Scientist is responsible for the following:

• Own and continuously improve sales quota models and methodologies, ensuring they are accurate, scalable, explainable, and aligned with compensation design and business objectives.

• Translate sales strategy, financial targets, budget assumptions, historical performance, run-rate data, and compensable metrics into executable quota methodologies.

• Validate quota-setting inputs and outputs, including baselines, historical data, assumptions, model logic, and results.

• Proactively identify data-quality issues, unsupported assumptions, model risks, and upstream dependencies that could affect quota accuracy or field outcomes.

• Partner across Finance, Sales Compensation/Plan Design, Implementation, Analytics, Operations, and data-owner teams to align financial objectives with quota methodology and execution.

• Provide quota-model expertise and analytical support to business and field stakeholders, clearly explaining model drivers, assumptions, limitations, tradeoffs.