M

Microsoft

Builds workplace software, PCs and cloud services

Principal Software Engineer

Software EngineeringPosted on Nov 6
Full-timeRedmond, WA, USA$165.6k - $331.2k /yrIn-person

About the Job

Requirements

  • A Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 8 or more years of technical engineering experience coding in languages including C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python, or equivalent experience.
  • Ability to meet Microsoft, customer, and/or government security screening requirements, including passing the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire or transfer and every two years thereafter.
  • Experience designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems, cloud platforms, data platforms, AI services, or enterprise software systems.
  • Experience building foundational platform capabilities that serve multiple products, services, customers, or engineering organizations at scale.
  • Expertise in software architecture, distributed systems, data architecture, reliability engineering, scalability, performance optimization, and operational excellence.
  • Programming experience in C#, Java, Python, JavaScript, C++, or similar modern development languages.
  • Experience with Azure, cloud-native architectures, containerized workloads, platform services, and hyperscale cloud infrastructure.
  • Experience building or operating business data platforms, knowledge systems, enterprise data services, semantic models, metadata platforms, retrieval systems, search technologies, or intelligence platforms.
  • Experience developing AI-powered applications, LLM-enabled experiences, retrieval and grounding systems, agent frameworks, intelligent automation solutions, production AI services, or AI-native developer experiences.
  • Experience applying AI throughout the software development lifecycle, including AI-assisted engineering, code generation, testing, quality validation, deployment automation, and operational intelligence.
  • Experience with modern engineering practices including CI/CD, infrastructure as code, automated testing, observability, telemetry, incident management, and DevOps.
  • Understanding of security, privacy, governance, compliance, reliability, accessibility, and Responsible AI principles for enterprise-scale AI systems.
  • Ability to create clarity in ambiguous environments, influence technical direction without formal authority, and align stakeholders around long-term platform investments and architectural decisions.
  • Communication skills to translate complex technical concepts into clear engineering, product, customer, and business outcomes.
  • Demonstrated experience mentoring senior engineers, driving cross-organization technical leadership, and raising the engineering bar across large engineering teams.

Responsibilities

  • Lead architecture, technical strategy, and design for large-scale business data, intelligence, AI, and cloud platform systems; define and drive technical direction across foundational platform capabilities, intelligent services, and cross-organization initiatives.
  • Design and evolve cloud-native distributed systems that power enterprise-grade business applications, data platforms, copilots, agents, and AI-driven experiences, focusing on scalability, reliability, performance, security, governance, compliance, and operational excellence.
  • Lead development of AI-native platform capabilities, including enterprise retrieval and grounding systems, semantic intelligence, process intelligence, agent orchestration, intelligent automation, and LLM-powered experiences.
  • Drive the evolution of Dataverse as the business data and intelligence platform for the AI era, enabling customers to transform enterprise data, processes, and knowledge into actionable intelligence and business outcomes.
  • Champion AI-native engineering practices across the organization by leveraging AI throughout the software development lifecycle, accelerating innovation, improving developer productivity, and raising engineering quality.
  • Define platform architecture and modernization strategies that improve platform consistency, extensibility, resiliency, developer experience, and long-term maintainability across Microsoft's business application ecosystem.
  • Partner with engineering leaders, product managers, architects, researchers, data scientists, and business stakeholders to shape roadmaps, influence investments, and deliver platform capabilities that unlock customer and business value.
  • Evaluate architectural tradeoffs across data platforms, intelligence layers, AI systems, and distributed services while balancing customer needs, platform scalability, governance, cost efficiency, and long-term technical sustainability.
  • Establish reusable platform patterns, frameworks, APIs, data models, and intelligence services that enable teams across Microsoft to build AI-powered solutions faster and with higher quality.
  • Champion engineering excellence through secure development practices, automation, CI/CD, observability, testing, telemetry, incident management, and operational rigor for mission-critical cloud services.
  • Mentor and develop engineers through technical leadership, architecture reviews, design coaching, AI-native engineering best practices, and leadership by example.
  • Foster a culture of customer obsession, innovation, accountability, continuous learning, and inclusive collaboration while helping teams navigate ambiguity and deliver impact at scale.

Desired Qualifications

  • A Master's Degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 12 or more years of technical engineering experience coding in languages including C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python; or a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 15 or more years of such experience; or equivalent experience.

About the Company

Microsoft

Builds workplace software, PCs and cloud services

Microsoft builds workplace software, operating systems and cloud infrastructure for consumers, businesses and government agencies, from small organizations to global enterprises. Microsoft 365 combines Word and Excel with Teams communication and Copilot AI features, while Windows runs PCs and Surface supplies the company's own computers. Azure rents computing capacity, storage and databases to build and run web applications. Microsoft also sells Xbox consoles and games, collecting revenue through software licenses, subscriptions, usage charges and product sales. Founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Microsoft is headquartered in Redmond, Washington.

Company size
10,001+
Company stage
IPO
Headquarters
Redmond, WA
Founded
1975

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