Principal Software Engineer
Technology, Data & Digital · Software & Web Development · Software Engineering · DevOps
In short
Microsoft is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead the development of their next-generation platform, leveraging deep distributed systems expertise and an AI-forward perspective. The role focuses on simplifying infrastructure, enhancing reliability and security, and using AI to eliminate engineering bottlenecks. This hands-on technical leader will shape architecture, write code, and drive cross-team initiatives, ultimately impacting how platform engineering operates in an AI-enabled world.
Responsibilities
- Set technical direction and define a platform roadmap connecting long-term architectural investments with business needs.
- Apply AI to engineering problems, developing AI-assisted capabilities for workflows like troubleshooting and testing, with established evaluations and safeguards.
- Treat the platform as a product, working with partner teams to understand friction and develop self-service capabilities.
- Build automated validation, progressive rollout, observability, and recovery mechanisms to ensure safe delivery.
- Own outcomes end-to-end, from problem definition and architecture through implementation, adoption, and operation, measuring success through developer experience, reliability, performance, and cost.
- Lead across organizational boundaries, aligning stakeholders, resolving ambiguous problems, and building shared approaches.
- Raise the engineering bar by staying close to code, mentoring engineers, guiding design reviews, and fostering a culture of curiosity, accountability, and continuous improvement.
Requirements
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 6+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python, OR equivalent experience.
- Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python, OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 12+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python, OR equivalent experience.
- Experience designing, building, and operating distributed systems or shared platform services in production.
- Experience building platforms or developer tools adopted across multiple teams, with demonstrated improvements in engineering productivity, service reliability, or operational efficiency.
- Hands-on experience integrating large language models or agents into engineering workflows, including tool integration, evaluation, permission boundaries, and human oversight.
- Experience designing interfaces and workflows that support both human developers and AI agents, with clear contracts, discoverable capabilities, and auditable execution.
- Depth in one or more platform domains, such as service frameworks, data infrastructure, observability, CI/CD, experimentation, configuration management, or cloud infrastructure.
- Experience using telemetry, profiling, and production investigations to identify systemic bottlenecks and deliver measurable performance or cost improvements.
- Experience modernizing established systems through incremental architecture changes and migrations that preserve customer and partner confidence.
- A track record of balancing forward-looking exploration with pragmatic delivery, turning successful prototypes into supported, widely adopted platform capabilities.
- Solid systems engineering fundamentals, including API design, concurrency, data management, failure handling, and performance analysis.
- An AI-forward engineering mindset: ability to identify valuable applications of AI, write production code, lead difficult implementation work, and critically evaluate correctness, security, reliability, and cost.
- Demonstrated technical leadership on complex initiatives spanning multiple teams, including architectural decisions and delivery through production adoption.
- Ability to translate ambiguous requirements and developer needs into practical, maintainable technical solutions.
- Solid communication and collaboration skills, with experience explaining technical tradeoffs, influencing decisions, and mentoring engineers.
Benefits
- 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
Skills
CC++C#JavaJavaScriptPythonLarge Language Models
#Platform Engineering#AI#Distributed Systems
About Microsoft
Empowering every person and organization on the planet to achieve more
Every company has a mission. What's ours? To empower every person and every organization to achieve more. We believe technology can and should be a force for good and that meaningful innovation contributes to a brighter world in the future and today. Our culture doesn’t just encourage curiosity; it embraces it. Each day we make progress together by showing up as our authentic selves. We show up with a learn-it-all mentality. We show up cheering on others, knowing their success doesn't diminish our own. We show up every day open to learning our own biases, changing our behavior, and inviting…
Company
MicrosoftJob Posted
4 days ago
Employment Type
Full Time
Work mode
Hybrid
Salary
US$142,800–274,800 / year
Experience Level
Senior
Locations
United States
Qualification
Bachelor, Master
Applicants
Be an early applicant