Principal Software Engineer

The Microsoft Security Purview Team is looking for a passionate Principal Software Engineer to design, build, and operate high-throughput, multi-tenant Tier 0 services that customers depend on. In this role, you will shape the architecture and technical direction of secure, scalable, and highly reliable systems. You will anticipate failure modes, contain blast radius, evaluate complex tradeoffs, and establish engineering patterns that improve service health, maintainability, and operational efficiency.

You will combine hands-on engineering with broad technical leadership. This includes writing clean, well-factored, and thoroughly tested code; leading design reviews and complex live-site investigations; and driving systemic improvements that prevent recurring issues. You will collaborate across engineering, product, and partner teams to align dependencies, resolve ambiguity, and deliver durable solutions that scale beyond a single service or team.

You will also embrace an AI-first approach, both in the intelligent experiences we deliver and in how we design, build, test, operate, and continuously improve software. This opportunity is ideal for an engineer who brings strong technical judgment, thrives on solving complex distributed-systems challenges, and raises the engineering bar through influence, mentorship, and example.

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 architecture, development, and delivery of high-throughput, multi-tenant Tier 0 services, balancing scalability, reliability, security, performance, cost, and maintainability.
• Define and drive technical direction for complex distributed systems, anticipating failure modes, cross-service dependencies, capacity constraints, and potential blast radius before implementation.
• Design and build secure, extensible, performant, and thoroughly tested software while setting a high engineering-quality bar through hands-on technical leadership.
• Establish and scale engineering practices, coding patterns, observability standards, and service-health metrics that improve quality, operational efficiency, and long-term reliability.
• Lead complex live-site investigations, mitigation, root-cause analysis, and post-incident improvements using telemetry, logs, experimentation, and other diagnostic methods.
• Identify technical risks, dependencies, and unknowns early; communicate their potential impact and drive mitigation strategies that keep engineering efforts moving forward.
• Lead architecture, design, and code reviews; build alignment around technical decisions and clearly communicate strategy, tradeoffs, and risks across teams.
• Partner across engineering, product, security, and other disciplines to resolve ambiguity, align dependencies, and deliver durable solutions spanning multiple services and teams.
• Mentor and develop engineers through technical guidance, constructive feedback, knowledge sharing, and inclusive, hands-on leadership.
• Apply an AI-first mindset to create intelligent product capabilities and improve software design, development, testing, deployment, monitoring, and operations.

Software Engineering, High Throughput, Software Engineering, Microsoft Product Family, Operational Strategy, Software Design, Trade-Off Analysis, Technical Leadership, Process Improvement, Mentoring, * 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, * Masters 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 Bachelors 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.
• 3+ years of experience designing, building, shipping, and operating large-scale distributed or multi-tenant cloud services in production, including making architectural tradeoffs across scalability, reliability, security, performance, and cost.
• 2+ years of experience owning highly available production services, including on-call or live-site response, observability, root-cause analysis, and implementation of systemic improvements that prevent recurring incidents.
• 2+ years of experience delivering cloud-native services on Azure, AWS, or GCP using containerization, microservices, and orchestration technologies such as Kubernetes, with accountability for availability, latency, reliability, or cost objectives.

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.