Principal Software Engineer
Microsoft
Microsoft Teams is revolutionizing how the world collaborates, making work seamless and secure. Join us to shape the future of remote collaboration for hundreds of millions of users, delivering effortless connectivity anywhere. Together, we’re transforming modern work, life, and education by making communication truly borderless.
As a Principal Software Engineer, you will define the future of collaboration in Microsoft Teams, architecting and delivering intelligent solutions that leverage data science and AI/ML models spanning modern web or mobile front‑ends and cloud‑scale services. Beyond shipping high‑quality product increments, you will set the technical vision for our stack, mentor engineers across disciplines, and ensure our solutions meet rigorous standards for reliability, security, accessibility, and cost efficiency.
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
- Partners with appropriate stakeholders to determine user requirements for a set of scenarios.
- Leads identification of dependencies and the development of design documents for a product, application, service, or platform.
- Leads by example and mentors others to produce extensible and maintainable code used across products.
- Leverages subject-matter expertise of cross-product features with appropriate stakeholders (e.g., project managers) to drive multiple group's project plans, release plans, and work items.
- Holds accountability as a Designated Responsible Individual (DRI), mentoring engineers across products/solutions, working on-call to monitor system/product/service for degradation, downtime, or interruptions.
- Proactively seeks new knowledge and adapts to new trends, technical solutions, and patterns that will improve the availability, reliability, efficiency, observability, and performance of products while also driving consistency in monitoring and operations at scale and shares knowledge with other engineers.
- Embody our Culture and Values
Qualifications
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.
- 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.
- Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 8+ years of technical engineering experience coding in languages such as 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
- 5+ years of practical machine learning engineering experience using frameworks like PyTorch or TensorFlow within large code repositories and in collaborative team environments.
- 2+ years practical experience in designing, training or fine-tuning Transformer models or LLMs, as well as usage of applied LLM design patterns such as prompt engineering, flow engineering, RAG, self-review, reACT, guardrails, etc.
- Practical experience developing applications using prompt engineering, fine tuning, Open AI or Azure Open AI APIs.
Software Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $139,900 - $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:
https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay
This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.
Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.