Research Intern - Socio-Technical Workflow Analysis

Research Internships at Microsoft bring doctoral candidates together with researchers and engineers working across a wide range of fields. The goal is simple: learn by doing work that matters. Within Microsoft Research, we are looking at how teams get real work done across research, engineering, and program management. That includes how people plan projects, analyze results, share information, and stay aligned across groups. A range of emerging tools are being introduced to support how teams collaborate and manage work across projects, including tasks like information synthesis, planning, and coordination. As these capabilities evolve, teams are exploring where they fit best and what makes them effective in practice. This internship focuses on understanding those real-world workflows and translating observations into guidance that helps teams adopt new tools thoughtfully and effectively. This position is designed as a Research Internship with a program management lens. The work focuses on understanding how systems and teams operate in practice, and on translating observations into clear research and business insights that can inform how tools and workflows evolve over time. This Research Internship focuses on understanding what is actually happening on the ground. What do teams use? What do they ignore? What works well, and what gets in the way? The goal is to build a clear, grounded view of how these tools fit into day-to-day work and what would make them more useful in practice.