Principal Software Engineer – AI Frameworks

Technology, Data & Digital · Software & Web Development · Software Engineering

In short

The Microsoft AI Frameworks team is looking for a Principal Software Engineer to lead technical initiatives in AI frameworks and serving stacks for frontier models, including OpenAI GPT models. This role involves establishing technical direction, making architectural decisions, and leading engineers to optimize performance and reliability on various hardware platforms, contributing to significant production impact.

Responsibilities

Own the technical vision, architecture, roadmap, and multi-release execution strategy for critical AI framework, performance, benchmarking, or developer-productivity capabilities.
Lead technical alignment across teams by shaping architecture and priorities, resolving competing requirements, and holding researchers, product groups, infrastructure owners, and hardware partners accountable to clear decisions, execution plans, and measurable outcomes.
Build technical leadership capacity across the organization by mentoring engineers, developing emerging technical leads, establishing high standards for quality and maintainability, and creating an inclusive engineering culture in which teams can execute effectively at scale.
Steer ambiguous, cross-stack investigations and investments spanning models, frameworks, compilers, runtimes, systems, services, and silicon; set technical priorities, resolve trade-offs, and drive teams to decisions.
Provide hands-on technical leadership by setting the engineering approach, delegating and unblocking critical work, and directly contributing through prototypes, critical-path implementation, design and code reviews, complex debugging, and operational readiness.
Spearhead common measurement, automation, observability, and engineering mechanisms that turn one-off analyses into scalable platform capabilities.
Drive measurable improvements in model onboarding velocity, runtime performance, reliability, hardware utilization, and Azure capacity efficiency.
Embody Microsoft’s culture and values.

Requirements

Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 8+ years of technical engineering experience coding in languages such as C++ or Python, OR equivalent experience.
Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role.
Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Desired Qualifications

Master'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++ or Python OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 15+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C++ or Python OR equivalent experience.
Demonstrated experience serving as a technical lead for complex cross-team initiatives, including setting strategy, making architectural decisions, aligning stakeholders, and driving execution from concept through production.
Robust/extensive experience designing and shipping complex, high-performance or distributed software systems
Deep foundation in software architecture, computer architecture, and accelerator-aware optimization
Advanced experience with LLM inference frameworks or AI accelerator kernel optimizations
Proven track record of creating reusable platforms, influencing senior technical and business stakeholders, developing other technical leaders, and scaling engineering practices across teams.

Benefits

The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $165,600 - $296,400 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 $220,800 - $331,200 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

C++Python

#AI#Frameworks#OpenAI#GPUs#Optimization#Cloud#Software Engineering

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