Principal Software Engineer
The Windows Agents, Growth and Innovation team is defining the technical foundation for the next generation of AI-powered Windows experiences. We are bringing together advances in intelligent agents, local and cloud AI, and the Windows platform to create experiences that are useful, trustworthy, responsive, and available at global scale.
We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer to provide technical leadership across complex, multi-team initiatives. You will establish architectural direction, identify foundational investments, and guide systems from early incubation through broad customer deployment. You will partner with engineering and product leaders across Microsoft to align technical strategies, resolve ambiguity, and enable teams to deliver cohesive experiences. You will raise the engineering bar through technical design, hands-on problem solving, mentoring, and a sustained focus on security, privacy, reliability, performance, and operational excellence.
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.
Responsibilities
- Lead the architecture, design, implementation, and delivery of complex software systems that enable intelligent agent experiences across Windows.
- Define the technical vision and long-term architecture for capabilities spanning the Windows platform, local and cloud AI models, agent orchestration, platform services, and customer-facing experiences.
- Translate ambiguous customer and business needs into clear technical requirements, system designs, execution plans, and measurable outcomes.
- Partner with product management, design, applied science, security, privacy, and engineering teams across Microsoft to deliver cohesive end-to-end experiences.
- Make sound architectural decisions and engineering tradeoffs involving performance, reliability, scalability, compatibility, maintainability, security, privacy, and time to market.
- Remain hands-on throughout the development lifecycle by building prototypes, contributing production code, debugging complex system issues, and leading technical design and code reviews.
- Establish engineering standards and reusable patterns that enable multiple teams to develop, integrate, test, deploy, and operate Windows and AI capabilities efficiently.
- Champion responsible AI, secure-by-design and secure-by-default development, privacy, accessibility, and compliance throughout product design and implementation.
- Drive engineering quality through automated testing, telemetry, diagnostics, performance analysis, experimentation, and disciplined release processes.
- Build operational excellence by identifying failure modes, establishing service-health measures, improving troubleshooting capabilities, and leading the resolution of complex live-site issues.
- Identify architectural dependencies and technical risks early, align stakeholders on mitigation plans, and remove engineering barriers that span teams or organizational boundaries.
Required/Minimum Qualifications:
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 4+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, 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.
Preferred Qualifications:
- 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++, or Rust.
- 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++, or Rust.
- OR equivalent experience
- Experience designing, developing, debugging, and testing complex systems software, including kernel-mode and user-mode components.
- Experience with multi-threaded software development, systems programming, APIs, and drivers.
- Solid understanding of Windows and/or Linux internals, virtualization technologies, VM/host architectures, and containerized environments.
- Experience developing low-level systems software, platform services, networking infrastructure, or operating system components.
- Knowledge of networking fundamentals, including network protocols, packet analysis, packet switching, and packet filtering.
- Solid architectural design and problem-solving skills, with a track record of delivering scalable, production-quality software across multiple release cycles.
- Thorough understanding of modern compute architectures spanning PCs, servers, virtualization, and networking systems.
- Solid written and verbal communication skills with proven cross-functional collaboration experience.
#W+DJOBS
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.