Principal Software Engineer

We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer.

As a Principal Software Engineer providing technical leadership on our platform team, you will architect, build, and guide the delivery of innovative automation services that empower both makers and enterprises. You’ll lead initiatives spanning platform engineering and advanced AI development, applying your deep technical expertise to solve complex, large-scale challenges and define the strategic direction of our agentic automation platforms. This role offers the opportunity to shape high-impact products relied upon by millions, drive technical excellence across the team, and further develop your leadership in cloud-scale engineering and applied AI.

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.

Starting January 26, 2026, Microsoft AI (MAI) employees who live within a 50- mile commute of a designated Microsoft office in the U.S. or 25-mile  commute of a non-U.S., country-specific location are expected to work from  the office at least four days per week. This expectation is subject to local law and may vary by jurisdiction. 

Responsibilities

• Partners with appropriate stakeholders to determine user requirements for a set of scenarios.
• Drives identification of dependencies and the development of design documents for a product, application, service, or platform.
• Directs efforts for creation and conducting of experimentation to determine the effectiveness of changes, monitors developments for prototyping and testing products, interprets results, and decides on next steps or ship decision from results. Drives identification of the correct metrics for experimentation in determining improving customer value.
• Leads by example and mentors others to produce extensible and maintainable code used across products.
• Leverages subject-matter expertise of cross-product features with appropriate stakeholders (e.g., program managers) to drive multiple group's project plans, release plans, and work items.
• Holds accountability as a Designated Responsible Individual (DRI), mentoring engineers across products/solutions, working on-call to monitor system/product/service for degradation, downtime, or interruptions.
• Proactively seeks new knowledge and adapts to new trends, technical solutions, and patterns that will improve the availability, reliability, efficiency, observability, and performance of products while also driving consistency in monitoring and operations at scale and shares knowledge with other engineers.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• 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.
• 5+ years of industry experience in cloud service development, successfully shipping services through multiple releases. 

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.

Preferred Qualifications:

• 6+ years of experience building scalable applications and serv