Principal Software Engineer

Overview

Microsoft's Azure Core organization is responsible for the foundational infrastructure that powers one of the world's largest cloud platforms. We build the systems that deliver industry-leading performance, security, reliability, and efficiency across Azure's compute, networking, and storage services.

We seeking a Principal Software Engineer to help evolve Microsoft’s high-performance, security-critical virtualization platform, with a focus on virtualizing devices such as GPUs and NVMe controllers. In this role, you will shape foundational technology across the virtualization platform used by Hyper-V, Azure, Windows, Linux, and containers.

This is a highly technical systems engineering role focused on building software at the hardware/software boundary. You will collaborate closely with architects, firmware engineers, hardware designers, and platform teams to deliver scalable, secure, and high-performance infrastructure capabilities that power Azure at hyperscale.

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

• Define architecture and deliver foundational capabilities as a key technical leader within Microsoft’s virtualization platform.
• Design, implement, and deliver innovative features across Microsoft’s virtualization platform, focused on device virtualization.
• Drive the development of low-level systems software spanning operating systems, virtualization, host infrastructure, device management, and DPU-host interaction layers.
• Design and implement high-performance networking and storage dataplane capabilities, optimizing for throughput, latency, scalability, reliability, and resource efficiency at hyperscale.
• Partner with hardware architects, firmware engineers, and platform software teams to deliver tightly integrated hardware/software solutions for next-generation Azure infrastructure platforms.
• Lead technical execution for complex, cross-functional initiatives, driving design alignment, implementation quality, and successful delivery across multiple engineering teams.
• Identify and resolve complex system-level challenges involving performance, reliability, diagnosability, scalability, and security across the platform stack.
• Drive technical design reviews and contribute to architectural direction within Azure Boost and host platform infrastructure, providing deep expertise in systems software and platform architecture.
• Develop software that interfaces directly with DPUs, accelerators, PCIe devices, virtualization technologies, and platform management subsystems.
• Establish engineering best practices for software quality, testing, validation, observability, and operational readiness in large-scale production environments.
• Collaborate across Azure Core, networking, storage, silicon, and platform engineering teams to influence technical direction and improve platform capabilities.
• Mentor and develop engineers through technical leadership, design reviews, code reviews, and hands-on guidance.
• Stay current on industry advancements in systems software, virtualization, networking, storage, and hardware acceleration technologies, incorporating relevant innovations into Azure platform designs.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor'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 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 12+ 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 15+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
• OR equivalent experience.
• Experience:
• developing low-level systems software, including operating systems, kernel components, hypervisors, virtualization platforms, device drivers, or platform infrastructure services;
• owning and delivering significant portions of a DPU, SmartNIC, host platform, or accelerator software stack;
• with hardware acceleration technologies and interfaces such as PCIe, DMA, SR-IOV, RDMA, NVMe, IOMMU, hardware offloads, and device virtualization;
• designing software at the hardware/software boundary and collaborating closely with firmware, silicon, platform architecture, and hardware engineering teams;
• developing software in C/C++ and/or Rust for performance-critical systems.
• building, debugging, and operating large-scale cloud infrastructure systems in production environments.
• Systems performance analysis and troubleshooting skills, including root cause analysis of complex platform, networking, storage, or virtualization issues.
• Understanding of high-performance networking dataplanes, storage dataplanes, and I/O subsystems, including techniques for optimizing latency, throughput, scalability, and resource efficiency.
• Familiarity with Linux and Windows internals, virtualization technologies, container platforms, and cloud infrastructure architectures.
• Demonstrated ability to drive technical design and execution across multiple engineering teams through architecture reviews, design leadership, and hands-on technical contributions.

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Pay and benefits

Software Engineering IC6 - 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:

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