FATE Research Assistant (“Pre-doc”)

The Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics (FATE) research group at Microsoft Research New York City (MSR NYC) is looking for a pre-doctoral research assistant (pre-doc) to start August 2025. The pre-doc will have the opportunity to work on projects led by researchers such as Solon Barocas, Alexandra Chouldechova, Kate Crawford, Miro Dudík, Hanna Wallach, and Jennifer Wortman Vaughan, among others. The contract for this position is until June 30, 2026, with a possibility of extension until June 30, 2027. This program is an ideal opportunity for an emerging researcher to further develop substantive expertise, research skills, and technical abilities prior to applying to PhD programs.

We seek candidates with interests in FATE-related topics and a desire to work in a highly interdisciplinary environment that includes researchers from computer science, statistics, the social sciences, the humanities, and other fields. The research group’s current interests include AI measurement and evaluation; AI transparency; AI law and policy; responsible AI in practice; human-AI interaction; and economic impacts of AI.

We are particularly interested in candidates who have experience with empirical research. Given that we often take a mixed methods approach in our research, combining quantitative (e.g., statistical analysis, computational experiments) and qualitative (e.g., interviews, thematic analysis) methods, we would be especially excited by candidates that have experience with both approaches. While we expect all candidates to be well-versed in quantitative methods, we are open to candidates who have limited experience with qualitative methods, so long as they are willing to cultivate these skills on the job.

Since our work focuses on AI technologies as they are currently developed, deployed, evaluated, and used, we prefer candidates to have some exposure to the development or practical application of AI in real world settings.

We would also prefer candidates who have experience performing literature reviews, especially of emerging areas of research.

Position

The pre-doc will hold a time-limited contingent staff position at Microsoft Research – NYC, located at 300 Lafayette Street in New York City. MSR NYC focuses on academic research designed for publication in peer-reviewed venues. The lab includes 25 PhD researchers in the areas of computational social science, economics and computation, FATE, and machine learning, as well as a number of interns, post-doctoral fellows, and collaborating professors from top universities.

Key responsibilities:

This role will entail working on one or more research projects with job responsibilities such as:

  • Conducting evaluations of AI systems
  • Designing and conducting experiments, interviews, surveys, etc.
  • Obtaining, cleaning, and manipulating datasets from the web or other sources
  • Using statistical and machine learning methods to analyze data
  • Manually coding unstructured data
  • Conducting literature reviews
  • Designing/maintaining websites
  • Helping to coordinate projects
  • Drafting various documents, including the possibility of co-authoring papers for publication

Include the following items in your application:

  1. A cover letter that includes:
    1. A brief description of your interest in the FATE research group and your own research interests
    2. A description of your experience with research (as a research assistant, working independently (e.g., thesis), and/or as part of a non-academic job)
    3. A description of your experience with different quantitative and/or qualitative methods
    4. A brief discussion of the types of doctoral programs that you intend to apply to (e.g., computer science, information science, statistics, etc.) and any specific subfields (e.g., human-computer interaction), domains (e.g., healthcare), or methods (e.g., causal inference) that most interest you.
    5. The names and contact information of 2-3 references. At least one reference must be someone for whom you have worked as a research assistant or someone who has supervised your own research.
    6. Optional links to any relevant professional webpages that you maintain (e.g., homepage, research blog, GitHub repo, etc.)
  1. A current CV
  2. All relevant academic transcripts (unofficial is fine)
  3. An optional writing sample (e.g., thesis, seminar paper, literature review, etc.) and/or optional data analysis sample (with accompanying code)

Required skills and qualifications:

  • Bachelor’s degree completed by summer 2025
  • Strong quantitative skills (which can be evidenced by prior research employing such skills or coursework in statistics or related quantitative fields)
  • Demonstrated skills for conducting statistical analysis and producing visualizations in Python (e.g., using pandas, seaborn) and/or R (e.g., tidyverse, ggplot)

Preferred skills and qualifications:

  • Demonstrated programming skills with general purpose languages like Python, Java, C++
  • Prior experience with computational and/or empirical research
  • Prior experience with qualitative research methods (e.g., interviews, thematic analysis)
  • Prior experience conducting literature reviews in rapidly evolving research domains
  • Prior experience with the development, deployment or evaluation of AI systems in real world settings (e.g., through private or public sector internships)

NOTE: Applicants must be eligible to work in the U.S. to accept this paid position.

We will begin reviewing applications on June 2.

Apply now