Research Internship – Program Management Lens

Job Description

Research Intern – Socio-Technical Workflow Analysis | Microsoft

The Tone:
This is a 12-week research internship at Microsoft, located in the manager’s Microsoft worksite location. Microsoft Research brings together doctoral candidates with researchers and engineers working across a wide range of fields. The goal is to learn by doing work that matters, specifically focusing on how teams achieve real work across research, engineering, and program management. This role is crucial for understanding how emerging tools for information synthesis, planning, and coordination fit into day-to-day workflows, and for translating observations into guidance that helps teams adopt new tools thoughtfully and effectively.

The TL;DR
• Role: Internship
• Type: Temporary (12 weeks)
• Location: In-person, Manager’s Microsoft worksite location
• Pay: $6710–$14360 monthly
• Team: Microsoft Research
• Mission: Understand real-world socio-technical workflows, analyzing how teams utilize collaboration tools, and translating these insights into actionable guidance for tool adoption and evolution.

What You’ll Actually Do
• Investigate: Work with researchers, engineers, and program managers to understand how work flows across projects and teams, including planning, analysis, information sharing, and alignment.
• Observe: Analyze how emerging tools are used in practice for tasks like information synthesis, planning, and coordination, identifying where they help and where there are opportunities to improve.
• Analyze: Look for consistent patterns across different roles and groups regarding tool usage, paying attention to why people choose to use or not use specific tools.
• Summarize: Condense findings into clear and useful written summaries and presentations that provide a grounded view of how tools fit into day-to-day work.
• Recommend: Suggest practical improvements to existing tools, onboarding approaches, or usage guidance to enhance effectiveness and inform future tool and workflow evolution.

The Must-Haves
• Background: Currently enrolled in a PhD program in a field such as Organizational Psychology, Sociology, Communication, Behavioral Science, Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, or Information Science.
• Experience: At least 1 year of experience conducting research or analysis related to human-computer interaction, socio-technical systems, or collaborative workflows. This includes studying how individuals or teams adopt, adapt to, or resist new tools, technologies, or workflows in real-world settings.
• Skills: Ability to synthesize qualitative and/or quantitative observations into clear, practical recommendations; strong written and verbal communication for sharing research and actionable insights; aptitude for translating between different groups (e.g., research, engineering, program management).
• Bonus: Experience working on socio-technical systems (e.g., collaboration tools, developer platforms); familiarity with technical environments such as software development or data science teams; interest in how trust, decision-making, and coordination evolve with new tools.