Microsoft

Candidate Generation & Retrieval Architectures

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Microsoft

Candidate Generation & Retrieval Architectures

 Microsoft

Instructor: Microsoft

Included with Coursera PlusLearn more

Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals.
Advanced level

Recommended experience

2 weeks to complete
at 10 hours a week
Flexible schedule
Learn at your own pace
Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals.
Advanced level

Recommended experience

2 weeks to complete
at 10 hours a week
Flexible schedule
Learn at your own pace

What you'll learn

  • Implement matrix factorization and Bayesian Personalized Ranking for implicit feedback datasets using Azure ML SDK v2

  • Build two-tower retrieval models and scalable embedding-based pipelines using FAISS and Azure AI Search.

  • Construct graph-based multi-hop retrieval networks and sequential causal transformer models for next-item prediction.

  • Design hybrid content-based pipelines with cold-start fallback routing using sentence transformers and CLIP embeddings.

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Recently updated!

September 2026

Assessments

24 assignments¹

AI Graded see disclaimer
Taught in English

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This course is part of the Microsoft Recommender Systems Engineering with LinkedIn Professional Certificate
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There are 16 modules in this course

Learn the core components of the multi-stage recommendation pipeline and how to scale from hundreds of millions of candidates to a final curated list.

What's included

1 video2 readings1 assignment

Analyze how different business models (social feeds, streaming media, and multi-tenant enterprise B2B SaaS applications) completely shift caching strategies, data isolation requirements, and graph topologies.

What's included

1 video2 readings2 assignments

Dive into the mathematics and distributed implementation of SVD and PySpark ALS for collaborative filtering on massive datasets.

What's included

2 videos1 reading2 assignments

Shift to ranking loss frameworks by implementing BPR and negative sampling strategies natively in PyTorch and tracking experiment metrics via Azure ML SDK v2.

What's included

3 readings2 assignments

Learn to extract and leverage structured features and unstructured embeddings to build a robust content-based representation layer for your items, utilizing both scalable enterprise API endpoints and open-source foundation models.

What's included

1 video2 readings2 assignments

Architect routing logic to blend content-based and collaborative signals via deep learning layers, building fallback mechanisms to solve the cold-start problem.

What's included

1 video3 readings1 assignment

Architect the structural components of a deep neural retrieval network using dual-encoder designs and contrastive learning methodologies.

What's included

2 videos3 readings1 assignment

Prepare your trained two-tower model for production by pre-computing item catalogs and serializing the user tower for lightning-fast inference.

What's included

3 readings2 assignments

Understand the algorithms behind Approximate Nearest Neighbor search and implement highly optimized local indexes using FAISS.

What's included

2 videos2 readings1 assignment

Move from local FAISS indexes to scalable, managed cloud infrastructure using Azure AI Search to implement hybrid search and semantic reranking.

What's included

4 readings1 assignment

Compare leading sequence-aware candidate generation architectures and build robust verification steps to prevent inference-time data leakage.

What's included

1 video3 readings1 assignment

Architect advanced retrieval models by leveraging fine-tuned causal large language models (LLMs) as dual encoders to process complex interaction streams.

What's included

3 readings2 assignments

Traverse highly sparse networks using Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) to capture higher-order collaborative signals through multi-hop neighbor aggregation.

What's included

1 video3 readings1 assignment

Architect the aggregation layer that merges graph-derived candidates with dense embeddings to formulate a robust, multi-source retrieval pool.

What's included

1 video2 readings2 assignments

Explore how modern Large Language Models can synthetically augment user profiles and act as direct semantic retrievers. You will analyze the critical trade-offs in system engineering between zero-shot prompt retrieval and indexed MRL vector search architectures.

What's included

3 readings2 assignments

Synthesize your candidate-generation engineering skills by constructing a unified, high-scale multi-source retrieval pipeline within Azure Databricks. You will programmatically orchestrate this multi-source pool and execute global deduplication within Azure Databricks to maximize candidate diversity and recall, compiling a portfolio-ready technical architecture artifact.

What's included

3 readings1 assignment

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Instructor

 Microsoft
440 Courses2,897,897 learners

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¹ Some assignments in this course are AI-graded. For these assignments, your data will be used in accordance with Coursera's Privacy Notice.