Principal Software Engineer
Microsoft
Principal Software Engineer
Microsoft
Builds workplace software, PCs and cloud services
The Maia Model Enablement team owns the end-to-end technical work required to bring frontier AI models onto Microsoft's AI accelerators and make them successful in production. Our work spans model enablement, performance optimization, serving capabilities, validation infrastructure, hardware bring-up, and cross-stack debugging.
We are looking for a Prinicipal Software Engineer who enjoys defining technical direction and solving complex, end-to-end systems challenges at the intersection of AI models, software, and hardware. Successful engineers combine deep technical expertise, strong systems thinking, and sound technical judgment to identify high-impact investments, align teams around durable solutions, and improve model enablement as a capability.
At Microsoft, our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more guides how we partner with customers to deliver trusted, impactful solutions. With a growth mindset culture, we innovate responsibly and measure success by shared progress people, teams, and customers. Join us to do meaningful work that changes the world and helps shape what’s next for everyone.
What You’ll Do
Define and drive the technical strategy required to enable new AI models, model architectures, and hardware generations on Maia.
Lead complex cross-stack investigations spanning models, serving systems, infrastructure, and hardware, driving resolution of systemic technical challenges.
Drive platform-wide improvements in performance, scalability, and serving capabilities that benefit multiple models and future hardware generations.
Create durable automation, validation, and engineering systems that improve the speed, reliability, and repeatability of model enablement across the organization.
Align model, software, infrastructure, and hardware teams around shared technical direction, execution plans, and long-term platform investments.
How We Work
We work across the entire software stack, from model architectures and serving systems to infrastructure and hardware interactions.
The problems we solve evolve throughout the lifecycle of both models and hardware platforms. Engineers on the team regularly become effective in new domains and develop deep expertise when needed.
We rely heavily on measurement, experimentation, automation, and AI-assisted engineering workflows to move quickly and scale our impact.
We partner closely with model, software, and hardware teams to deliver production-ready solutions.
Success Looks Like
Multiple generations of models and hardware can be enabled more quickly because of architectural, platform, or process improvements you have driven.
Performance, scalability, and reliability improvements benefit broad classes of workloads rather than individual deployments.
Recurring technical challenges are transformed into reusable platform capabilities rather than repeatedly solved as one-off issues.
The organization is better prepared to adopt future hardware generations because of investments made ahead of need.
Maia model enablement becomes faster, more predictable, and more scalable across teams and workloads.
Required/Minimum Qualifications:
Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 6+ years of technical engineering experience coding in languages such as C++, or Python, or equivalent experience.
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: Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.
Additional or preferred qualifications:
Understanding of modern AI model architectures, inference systems, performance optimization, and serving stacks.
Experience diagnosing and resolving complex problems that span models, software, systems, infrastructure, and hardware.
Experience enabling software on new hardware platforms, accelerators, or large-scale systems through activities such as bring-up, performance characterization, hardware-software debugging, or platform enablement.
Experience leveraging modern engineering tools, including AI-assisted workflows, automation, and agents, to improve productivity and accelerate technical investigation.
Demonstrated ability to identify high-impact technical investments, drive them from concept through production, and create durable capabilities that improve how engineering work is performed.
Technical judgment and experience leading cross-team technical initiatives across complex and ambiguous problem spaces.
Ability to balance immediate delivery needs with long-term platform strategy and architectural direction.
#AIInfra
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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