M

Microsoft

Builds workplace software, PCs and cloud services

Principal Software Engineer

Full-Time
No salary listed
Expert
Bachelor's
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
In Person
Software Engineering

About the job

Requirements
  • A bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
  • At least 12 years of professional software engineering experience, including hands-on development in one or more modern programming languages such as C#, Java, or Python.
  • Strong understanding of software engineering fundamentals, including data structures, algorithms, object-oriented design, and scalable system principles.
  • Experience developing, testing, debugging, and maintaining production-quality code while following established coding standards and development processes.
  • Working knowledge of cloud, distributed systems, or service-based architectures, with exposure to reliability, performance, and monitoring concepts.
  • Ability to design and architect products, services, and systems using design principles across diverse technological solutions and guide projects through the engineering lifecycle to align with business goals and customer satisfaction.
  • Ability to lead validation of innovative products, services, and solutions; identify improvement opportunities; monitor and test systems; and develop strategic solutions to challenges.
  • Ability to apply computer science principles to design, develop, and optimize scalable algorithms, distributed systems, business applications, and other software solutions.
  • Ability to extract actionable insights and use them to make swift, informed, and strategic decisions in the broader organizational context.
  • 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.
Responsibilities
  • Improve AI tools and practices across the software development lifecycle, own the quality of AI-generated artifacts, and embed Responsible AI controls and engineering-health metrics such as Accelerate, SPACE, and ESSP.
  • Lead and mentor teams in delivering secure, performant, well-tested, and maintainable code using modern coding patterns, including generative AI where appropriate; implement diagnostics and telemetry and disciplined reviews and retrospectives to prevent and resolve production issues.
  • Own architecture and design decisions for complex systems, evaluate options and tradeoffs against security, privacy, scalability, resiliency and disaster recovery, cost, and testability requirements, and coordinate dependencies across teams.
  • Drive engineering best practices, learning, and developer tooling to raise engineering standards, particularly for security and compliance evidence, security as code, automation, and scalable, reliable delivery.
  • Plan and execute delivery through experimentation, clear success and guardrail metrics, secure rollout and rollback strategies, and automated deployments aligned with schedules and operational readiness.
  • Build and improve observability and on-call readiness through logging, telemetry, dashboards, and playbooks; lead incident response and postmortems; and reduce incidents through systemic fixes and better troubleshooting assets.
  • Partner with stakeholders to validate user requirements and feasibility, capture explicit and implicit needs including security and privacy, and define measurable feedback loops and metrics to guide future improvements.
  • Build new Responsible AI services and integrate them with existing services such as Azure AI Content Safety, Azure OpenAI Service, and Azure AI Studio.
Desired Qualifications
  • At least 14 years of hands-on software engineering experience coding in languages such as C# or Python, with strong fundamentals and increasing depth in production-quality software.
  • Solid technical judgment and problem-solving skills, including designing and implementing scoped solutions, debugging complex issues, refactoring code, and improving service reliability and performance.
  • Ability to collaborate effectively and influence peers, navigate team dynamics, participate constructively in design and code reviews, and contribute positively to team engineering culture.
  • Demonstrated collaboration and emerging leadership skills, including mentoring engineers, owning well-defined components or features, and supporting operational excellence when needed.
  • Exposure to AI platforms, large language models, and core machine-learning concepts, with interest or early experience applying them to real-world software engineering problems.

About the company

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, Washington

Founded

1975

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Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • US corporate staff receive education support: eligible, approved graduate coursework qualifies for up to $10,000 annually.
  • Cloud demand expands: July 2026 results showed Azure and other cloud services revenue grew 43% year-over-year in fiscal Q4.
  • Investment has an earnings cushion: July 2026 results reported $155.2 billion consolidated operating profit for fiscal 2026.

What critics are saying

  • Performance reviews include security: every Microsoft employee must discuss their security contribution with their manager.
  • Office flexibility depends on the role: Microsoft's postings specify requirements ranging from fully remote to fully on-site.
  • Cloud capacity faces local limits: Microsoft describes power-grid delays and water constraints affecting US datacenter expansion.

What makes Microsoft unique

  • Hybrid customers stay within reach: Azure Arc manages servers across customer datacenters and competing clouds.
  • Developer reach extends beyond Azure: Microsoft's GitHub hosts code collaboration alongside AI coding tools.
  • Professional data widens its business: Microsoft owns LinkedIn's recruiting, advertising and workplace-learning network.

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Benefits

  • Health Insurance
  • Dental Insurance
  • Vision Insurance
  • 401(k) Company Match
  • Professional Development Budget
  • Conference Attendance Budget
  • Flexible Work Hours
  • Remote Work Options

Growth & Insights and Company News

6 month growth

0%

1 year growth

0%

2 year growth

0%
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