Principal Software Engineer--M365 Work IQ

Work IQ is Microsoft 365 Copilot’s workplace intelligence layer, enabling AI agents and experiences to securely reason over enterprise data such as emails, meetings, documents, Teams messages, and people signals. Work IQ exposes this intelligence through agent-first interfaces including REST APIs, Agent-to-Agent (A2A) protocols, CLI tooling, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, enabling developers to build intelligent, enterprise-aware agents and applications.

We, the M365 Core Asia Pacific Copilot Extensibility Engineering team, are looking for a Principal Software Engineer for Work IQ whose primary engineering focus is building the intelligence platform that connects AI agents to Microsoft 365 knowledge. You will own the design and development of Work IQ's REST and A2A APIs, MCP infrastructure, retrieval and orchestration services, and developer tooling. Your work will shape how agents access, reason over, and act on enterprise knowledge, helping establish Work IQ as the foundation for the next generation of Microsoft 365 Copilot and agent experiences.

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.

• Take ownership of critical product and platform areas of the Work IQ API and related agentic components.
• Set a high technical and quality bar for agentic systems and developer-facing tooling. 
• Design and ship performant, reliable terminal experiences that developers depend on for daily work.
• Use data, benchmarks, and direct user feedback to guide iteration and investment. 
• Collaborate across org boundaries to enable other teams to build agentic products on top of a shared foundation. 
• Influence architecture, technical direction, and engineering standards beyond your immediate team.  

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.

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++, 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. 
• Hands-on experience building and operating generative AI or agentic systems in production, with direct ownership over quality, reliability, and iteration.
• Good experience building and shipping customer-facing developer interfaces/products, with depth across platform/foundation systems and user-facing experiences.
• Solid product mindset with a track record of owning ambiguous problem spaces and driving them to high-quality outcomes.
• Solid engineering fundamentals, including systems design, performance, and debugging in complex production environments.
• Experience designing, running, and optimizing evaluations for agentic systems, including tools, prompts, and agent loops.
• Experience building agentic development interfaces or working with related low level primitives is a strong plus.

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.