Principal Software Engineering Manager

Overview

The Windows + Devices Fundamentals team improves the reliability, performance, responsiveness, battery life, memory efficiency, and overall health of Windows devices. We build and operate the services, telemetry systems, and data pipelines that transform signals from labs and the installed base into trustworthy metrics, actionable diagnostics, and measurable engineering improvements.

We are seeking a Principal Software Engineering Manager to define strategy and lead an engineering organization responsible for critical Windows Fundamentals data and service capabilities. You will shape architecture and investment across backend services, telemetry platforms, data pipelines, metrics, and diagnostic workflows; grow senior technical and management talent; and drive coordinated execution that improves Windows health at scale.

This role is ideal for an experienced engineering leader who combines deep service and data-platform expertise with solid product judgment, organizational leadership, and a track record of aligning teams to solve complex technical and business problems.

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 the organizational strategy, portfolio, and multi-year roadmap for Windows Fundamentals backend services, telemetry systems, data pipelines, metrics, cohort frameworks, and diagnostic capabilities.
• Guide architecture and execution across scalable systems for telemetry ingestion, transformation, orchestration, storage, health monitoring, analytics, diagnostics, and automated engineering workflows.
• Establish organization-wide standards for service reliability, security, compliance, privacy, observability, data quality, schema evolution, deployment safety, live-site response, and operational excellence.
• Lead the organization in using large-scale telemetry, statistical methods, experimentation, and systems debugging to identify systemic opportunities, understand product-health movements, and drive prioritized engineering action across Windows.
• Drive architectural simplification, automation, AI-assisted analysis, and self-service capabilities that detect issues earlier, reduce operational toil, and increase engineering leverage across multiple teams.
• Use data, customer insights, and business priorities to make portfolio tradeoffs, sequence investments, manage technical and operational risk, and hold teams accountable for measurable outcomes.
• Build a solid and inclusive engineering organization by hiring, coaching, and developing managers, principal engineers, and technical leaders; establish succession plans and a culture of technical excellence and operational accountability.
• Create alignment across Windows engineering, data science, security, silicon, OEM, and service organizations; resolve cross-team dependencies and influence architecture, product direction, and investment decisions with senior leaders.

Required qualifications

• Applicants must have at least 12+ years of software engineering experience and a bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline. Equivalent practical experience is accepted in place of the degree.
• At least three years of people-management experience leading software engineers, including experience developing managers or senior technical leaders.
• Extensive experience leading the architecture, development, deployment, and operation of backend services, distributed systems, data pipelines, telemetry platforms, large-scale analytics, or engineering infrastructure.
• Demonstrated success building high-performing teams and leading complex, multi-team initiatives that delivered highly reliable production systems or platforms at scale.
• Deep technical judgment in service architecture, systems design, data engineering, security, reliability, debugging, and engineering tradeoffs.
• Ability to set organizational strategy, navigate ambiguity, make portfolio decisions using data, manage operational and delivery risk, and influence senior technical and product leaders across organizational boundaries.
• Experience leading organizations responsible for cloud services, distributed systems, data engineering, telemetry platforms, developer infrastructure, or business-critical production operations.
• Solid knowledge of Windows Fundamentals, Windows internals, reliability engineering, performance analysis, power efficiency, or system-level diagnostics.
• Experience leading secure and compliant services with solid observability, deployment controls, data-quality practices, live-site response, and operational accountability.
• Experience defining organizational metrics, cohorts, baselines, and measurement strategies using large-scale telemetry, experimentation, statistical analysis, or Azure data platforms.
• Track record of shaping architecture and product strategy, applying automation or AI to engineering workflows, developing senior leaders, and driving execution with executive and senior technical stakeholders.

The organization works with technologies including

• C, C++, C#, Python, PowerShell, SQL/KQL, scripting, and automation tools.
• WinDbg, Windows Performance Analyzer, ETW, and diagnostic and trace-processing systems.
• Kusto, Azure services and data platforms, distributed systems, orchestration, storage, deployment, and monitoring systems.
• Power BI, statistics, experimentation, anomaly detection, and large-scale telemetry analysis.
• Machine learning, AI-assisted analysis, and automated diagnostic and remediation workflows.
• #W+DJOBS
• #WSSIJOBS
• #WDJOBS

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.

Additional information

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