Principal Software Engineer

Overview

Join the Intelligent Conversation and Communications Cloud (IC3), the platform powering Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and next-generation AI experiences for millions of users worldwide. We are building the infrastructure that transforms real-time conversations, meetings, voice, video, and collaboration signals into intelligent, actionable experiences.

As a Principal Software Engineer, you will design and build an experimentation platform with self-service and agent-assisted experiences that help teams onboard, govern, and standardize experimentation-related workloads. You will drive the technical architecture and delivery of scalable, reliable services that simplify experiment setup, execution, and analysis. Working closely with engineering, data science, and product teams, you will shape the platform’s roadmap and enable teams to make confident, data-driven decisions.

This position is based in Redmond, Washington and requires the employee be in the office a minimum of 3 days per week.

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 design and development of large-scale, self-service AI, agentic, and data-platform capabilities and frameworks.
• Advance AI-native software development through coding agents, agentic workflows, and harness engineering.
• Drive cross-team technical alignment by partnering with engineering and product teams across Microsoft to define requirements and deliver trusted, end-to-end data solutions.
• Drive innovation by leveraging Microsoft Azure, AI technologies, and open-source frameworks.

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.
• Production big data platform experience, including streaming pipelines, platform capabilities, state management, checkpointing, connectors, or performance tuning.
• Online experimentation experience including scorecard generation, optimization, live site protection and standarization.
• Experience with Spark, Kafka, Airflow, distributed storage, analytical systems, or near-real-time data pipelines.
• Experience with Copilot, Agent, LLM orchestration, retrieval, evaluation, or agent-assisted engineering and data workflows.
• Domain knowledge in distributed tracing, observability, production diagnostics, telemetry systems, or service reliability.
• Experience building large-scale distributed systems, cloud services, or enterprise platforms.
• Proficiency in one or more programming languages such as C#, C++, Java, Python, or JavaScript.
• Experience designing reliable, highly available production services.
• Problem-solving skills with the ability to navigate ambiguity and drive technical decisions.
• Proven ability to collaborate across teams and influence technical direction.
• Passion for innovation, customer impact, and building services that operate at global scale.

#IC3 Platform

Pay and benefits

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:

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.