Principal Software Engineer
Microsoft
Principal Software Engineer
Microsoft
Builds workplace software, PCs and cloud services
AI agents are rapidly becoming foundational across industries, transforming how organizations automate workflows, make decisions, and scale productivity. Unlike traditional prompt-based systems, modern agents can reason, plan, and take actions autonomously, unlocking powerful new business scenarios while introducing new challenges around security, governance, and control.
Agent 365 is Microsoft’s unified control plane for AI agents, providing capabilities across agent registry, lifecycle management, access governance, observability, interoperability, and security. The Agent 365 Security team builds the experiences, services, and infrastructure that help organizations securely govern agents across their enterprise.
We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer to help define and build modern, high-scale, inclusive end-to-end experiences that empower administrators to effectively manage agent security, policies, and tools. This role is ideal for someone who enjoys solving complex distributed-system and product problems, building intuitive and performant user experiences, and collaborating across engineering, product, design, research, and partner teams.
In this role, you will work across the stack, with a balanced focus on front-end and back-end engineering. You will drive architecture and technical direction, design and build scalable services and experiences, and lead features from concept through production. Your work will shape how organizations securely operate and govern AI agents in enterprise environments, enabling intelligent workflows, actionable insights, and seamless integrations at scale.
As a Principal engineer, you will also help establish engineering patterns and architectural direction, influence investments across team boundaries, mentor engineers, and partner with stakeholders across Microsoft to solve emerging security and governance challenges in the rapidly evolving agent ecosystem.
Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.
Lead the architecture and design of scalable AI infrastructure, setting technical direction for complex, large-scale systems.
Define and drive end-to-end architecture for Agent Security, Policy, and Tool Governance, solving complex and ambiguous engineering problems across organizational boundaries.
Establish technical strategy and engineering frameworks for experimentation and evaluation.
Define success criteria and lead analysis of experimentation scorecards, translating results into engineering priorities and product improvements.
Partner closely with Product Managers and engineering leaders to define scenarios, datasets, evaluation methodologies, and measurable success criteria.
Lead data acquisition and evaluation-data strategy, establishing standards for data quality, formatting, accuracy, governance, and reuse.
Provide technical leadership across teams, driving architectural alignment, influencing engineering investments, and raising engineering quality.
Identify systemic technical risks and opportunities and drive solutions that improve scalability, reliability, security, and long-term maintainability.
Other Requirements:
Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings:
Software Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $274,800 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $188,000 - $304,200 per year.
Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay
This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.
Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.
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.
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