Principal Software Engineer

The Principal AI Architect is responsible for the following:

Architecture Strategy & Roadmap (Cloud + AI + Agentic)

• Own the reference architecture and technical roadmap for AI/Agentic platform capabilities (e.g., orchestration, skills, tools/plugins, memory, retrieval, evaluation, observability, governance).
• Translate Customer Success business objectives into platform investments and architectural decisions, balancing speed-to-value with security, compliance, cost, and long-term maintainability.
• Establish clear architectural guardrails and decision frameworks (e.g., "build vs. buy," "Copilot Studio vs. Foundry," "RAG vs. fine-tune," "central vs. federated patterns").

Technical Leadership & Architectural Governance

• Lead architecture/design reviews for major initiatives; drive alignment on system boundaries, contracts, dependency management, and resiliency.
• Define and standardize architecture patterns (multi-tenant SaaS, event-driven architectures, secure data access, model routing, agent safety controls).
• Create reusable templates, "golden paths," and reference implementations to accelerate engineering delivery across teams and reduce fragmentation.

Responsible AI, Security, Privacy, and Compliance by Design

• Embed Responsible AI principles into agentic solution design (human-in-the-loop, safety mitigations, evaluation, transparency, and auditability).
• Partner with security and compliance stakeholders to ensure services meet required controls and operational standards, and to drive alignment between policy intent and implementation.
• Define secure patterns for prompt/data handling, secrets management, identity, and access governance for AI systems.

Platform Reliability, Operability & Cost Management

• Drive architecture that improves reliability, observability, incident response readiness, and cost efficiency across AI-enabled services.
• Establish telemetry standards (quality, safety, latency, cost, success metrics) and ensure teams instrument consistently to enable operational excellence at scale.
• Design for production: rollout/rollback strategies, evaluation gates, and operational playbooks for AI/agent releases.

Cross-Org Influence & Coalition Building

• Build coalitions across broader Microsoft engineering/product groups to deliver complex, large-scale initiatives; resolve long-standing misalignments; and hold stakeholders accountable for commitments.
• Act as a trusted technical advisor to senior stakeholders, creating clarity, driving alignment, and enabling execution across multiple teams and disciplines.

Mentorship, Technical Community, and Talent Scaling

• Mentor engineers; enhance architecture quality, engineering discipline, and Responsible AI rigor.
• Contribute to internal technical communities through documentation, brown bags, and reusable engineering guidance-amplifying impact through others.

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., * Master's degree in computer science, Engineering 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

• 10+ experience in software engineering or solution architecture, with demonstrable success building and operating complex systems.

• 10 + years of full-stack development across frontend, backend, and cloud infrastructure, with a proficient command of data engineering, AI/ML systems, and deployment architectures.

• Proficient coding skills in C#, Python, JavaScript, and React.

• Experience designing and shipping AI/ML GenAI solutions, including one or more of:

• Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), enterprise search, vector retrieval

• LLM orchestration and agentic workflows

• AI evaluation/monitoring, safety and quality measurement

Experience architecting and delivering cloud-native, distributed systems at scale (multi-service systems, reliability, performance, and operability).

Proficient engineering fundamentals and ability to work "hands-on when needed" (prototyping/reference implementations, architectural spike investigations, debugging complex issues).

Experience with cross-team influence - driving alignment and execution across multiple disciplines and stakeholders.

Experience communicating clearly with technical and non-technical audiences; comfort presenting senior leadership.

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.

Microsoft is a global technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. We develop, license, and support a wide range of software products, services, and devices that help individuals and businesses realize their full potential.

Our flagship products include the Microsoft 365 productivity cloud, Windows operating system, Azure cloud platform, and Dynamics 365 business applications. We are also a leader in areas such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, developer tools, and gaming through Xbox and Game Pass.

With operations in more than 190 countries and over 220,000 employees worldwide, Microsoft is committed to responsible innovation, inclusive economic growth, and sustainability. We work closely with governments, industries, and communities to ensure that technology serves the public good and helps address some of the world’s most pressing challenges.

As we celebrate our 50th anniversary in 2025, we continue to look forward—investing in AI, cloud, and quantum computing to shape the future of work, education, and society at large scale.