Principal Software Development Engineer jobs at Microsoft in United States

work on highly strategic and industry-relevant projects. If you excel at solving complex problems, writing high-

systems using the latest technologies, we would like to hear from you. You will also be responsible to build AI

edge AI technology.

tackle our next set of significant challenges. You will be empowered to envision, design, code, validate, and

Required/Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 4+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
  • OR equivalent experience.
• 2+ years of experience in software engineering practices, coding and solid foundation in data structures and algorithms, with problem solving, debugging and analytical skills.

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/Additional Qualifications

• Master'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 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.
• Understanding of data structures, algorithms, and distributed systems.
• Proficiency in C++ or similar languages with memory management and address manipulation. Familiarity with system level coding, troubleshooting and debugging, multithreading and high-performance backend systems.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:

• Collaborate with stakeholders to determine user requirements for various scenarios.

• Drive the identification of dependencies and the development of design documents for products, applications, services, or platforms.

• Create, implement, optimize, debug, refactor, and reuse code to enhance performance, maintainability, effectiveness, and return on investment (ROI).

• Leverage subject-matter expertise of product features and partner with stakeholders (e.g., project managers) to drive project plans, release plans, and work items for the workgroup.

• Act as a Designated Responsible Individual (DRI) and guide other engineers by developing and following the playbook, working on call to monitor systems/products/services for degradation, downtime, or interruptions, alerting stakeholders about status, and initiating actions to restore systems/products/services for both simple and complex problems when appropriate.

• Proactively seek new knowledge and adapt to new trends, technical solutions, and patterns to improve the availability, reliability, efficiency, observability, and performance of products while driving consistency in monitoring and operations at scale.

• Lead by example, engage in discussions on the architecture of products or solutions, and apply engineering principles to establish robust and maintainable architecture and designs.

• Overcome roadblocks to deliver work to users quickly and iteratively.

• Drive, coach, and mentor others through design reviews, code reviews, and test case reviews.

• Design, develop, and operationalize the deployment of complex, enterprise-grade cloud services that leverage multiple services and platforms, ensuring high availability, scalability, robustness, and observability.

• Be responsible for the end-to-end lifecycle of these services, ensuring their scalability, reliability, and security.

• Drive improvements for systems and engineering processes with simplicity and maintainability as core tenets.

• Deliver value through a collaborative approach spanning multiple teams across geographies.

• Be a role model for an open, honest, and inclusive approach to problem-solving.

• Support and influence the team culture towards customer-centricity and continuous improvement.

• Implement practices that ensure accurate, safe, and efficient releases for our services.

As a Software Engineer II in this team, you will contribute to Azure host networking infrastructure by designing and deploying agents that integrate hardware and software components to ensure consistent and efficient networking for current and future Azure hosts. You will also develop Network Interface Card (NIC) servicing software to support AI and other Azure workloads at scale.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 2+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, Rust, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
  • OR equivalent experience.
• 1+ year(s) technical experience working in low level systems development (Ex. networking, drivers, etc.).
• 1+ year(s) technical experience with computer networking, and general cloud technologies.

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:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
  • OR related technical field AND 4+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++,Rust C#, Java, JavaScript, OR Python
  • OR Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 2+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
  • OR equivalent experience.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:Microsoft will accept applications for the role until October 22, 2025.

• Works with appropriate stakeholders to determine user requirements for a set of features.
• Contributes to the identification of dependencies, and the development of design documents for a product area with little oversight.
• Creates and implements code for a product, service, or feature, reusing code as applicable.
• Contributes to efforts to break down larger work items into smaller work items and provides estimation.
• Acts as a Designated Responsible Individual (DRI) working on-call to monitor system/product feature/service for degradation, downtime, or interruptions and gains approval to restore system/product/service for simple problems.
• Remains current in skills by investing time and effort into staying abreast of current developments that will improve the availability, reliability, efficiency, observability, and performance of products while also driving consistency in monitoring and operations at scale.

As a Senior Software Engineer on the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) team, you will help build secure, scalable, and reliable cloud-native infrastructure. Your focus will be on cross-cutting security concerns across the AKS stack, including designing and implementing secure-by-default features, improving threat modeling, and integrating artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted tooling to enhance security workflows. You will collaborate with engineers across the stack to build libraries, services, and automation that strengthen the security posture of AKS.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 4+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, OR Java, JavaScript, or Python
  • OR equivalent experience.

• 4+ year(s) experience with Kubernetes, Go programming language (Golang), and cloud-native technologies.

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:

• 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 Master'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.

• 6+ year(s) experience with Kubernetes, Go programming language (Golang), and cloud-native technologies.

• 4+ year(s) experience building and operating cloud-based and distributed systems, with a strong understanding of scalability, reliability, authentication, and authorization in production environments.

• 1+ year(s) experience working with artificial intelligence (AI) and agentic technologies, such as large language models (LLMs), autonomous agents, or AI-assisted development tools including GitHub Copilot, security analyzers, and anomaly detection systems.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until October 17th, 2025.

• Design and implement secure, scalable components and libraries for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), contributing to cloud-native infrastructure that supports a wide range of workloads.
• Collaborate with security and engineering teams to identify and address cross-cutting security concerns across the AKS stack.
• Develop and integrate artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted tools to support threat modeling, code analysis, and incident response.
• Contribute to automation and tooling that improves the quality of security signals and enhances developer productivity.
• Participate in design reviews and help shape secure-by-default architecture decisions.
• Stay current with emerging trends in security, AI technologies, and developments in the Kubernetes ecosystem.

for the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge world. The Microsoft Corporate Strategy Team is a small, specialized group that advises our CEO and executive leadership team on driving, assessing, and prioritizing the long-term strategic direction and growth for the company across its portfolio of existing and new offerings. The team has builta track recordof spotting trends early andthroughout the company. The group broadly focuses on three sets of activities:

• Thought leadership on the future state of the industry (e.g., economics of the cloud) and potential impact to Microsoft’s overall strategy

• Counsel to executives on multi-billion dollardecisions (inclusive of “needle moving” growth drivers, large strategic acquisitions and partnerships, portfolio optimization, etc.)

• Internal projects to ensure Microsoft’s processes and operations enable the company to grow and achieve our mission

As a member of Microsoft’s Corporate Strategy Team, you will drive formal quantitative and qualitative analytical decision support on high-priority, cross-company strategic issues. Example project areasideation, andcompetitive analysis and game theory.

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• , Finance, Economics, Liberal Arts, Computer Science, or related field AND 4+ years, marketing, strategy, business planning, consulting, banking, finance, economics, and/or partner organization experience
  • ORMaster's Degree in Business Administrationor related field AND 3+ years marketing, strategy, business planning, consulting, banking, finance, economics, and/or partner organization experience
  • OR equivalent experience (e.g., scaling a business, incubation, driving change in a large company, entrepreneurship, management consulting).
• 2+ years experience in Strategy, Management Consulting, and/or Finance

or Preferred Qualifications

• , Finance, Economics, Liberal Arts, Computer Science, or related field AND 8+ years marketing, strategy, business planning, consulting, banking, finance, economics, and/or partner organization experience
  • ORMaster’s Degree in Business Administrationor related fieldAND 6+ years marketing, strategy, business planning, consulting, banking, finance, economics, and/or partner organization experience
  • OR equivalent experience (e.g., scaling a business, incubation, driving change in a large company,entrepreneurship).
• 6+yearsexperiencein Strategy, Management Consulting, and/or Finance.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:Microsoft will accept applications for the role until October 22, 2025.

Corporate Strategy

• Develop and deliver divisional level analysis, options, execution plans, and recommendations based on analytical rigor, logic, and subject matter expertise
• Proactively spot strategic opportunities missed by others and plot insightful approaches to address them
• Investigates and provides an analysis of competitors, partners, business models, market sizing, and industry trends. Investigates and provides analysis of the merger and acquisition (M&A), venture funding, and public market environment and trends. Conducts market landscape analyses and reviews of companies of potential interest.
• Develops an understanding of Microsoft’s product portfolio, strategic priorities, competitive position, gaps, and potential opportunities. Investigates and provides an analysis of the merger and acquisition (M&A), venture funding and public market environment and trends. Supports and reviews product roadmap, go-to-market, integration plans, and related Issues.

Research, Analysis, & Framing

• Conducts market-based research by identifying and gathering information (e.g., financial statements, reports, analyses, stakeholder feedback, expert calls); interprets information with guidance from tenured colleagues as needed, including researching existing business and identifying new spaces for Microsoft; conducts analyses (e.g., financial modeling) to validate proposed ideas and inform business decisions.
• Assists in refining initial framing established by project lead for strategic questions and applies structure to analysis.

Problem Solving & Insight

• Guide project team problem solving through development of frameworks/methodologies to create insightful analysis and recommendations; identify the right question to frame the team’s work
• Synthesizes findings into insights within a project, including implications that inform business decisions; leverages insights to support strategic recommendations for Microsoft, with guidance from project leads.

Communication

• Produce high-quality executive communications and arguments to facilitate discussions and decision making
• Deliver project findings, recommendations, and implications to executives clearly and succinctly
• Communicates and advocates insights to business leaders (e.g., Senior Managers, Directors) and conveys viewpoints through written documents (e.g., memos, reports) and influence models (e.g., meetings, presentations) through multiple iterations of feedback and vetting, creating and executing outlines.
• Delivers project findings, recommendations, and implications to business partners to facilitate discussions and decision making.

Business Partner Relationships

• Deliver project findings, recommendations, and implications to executives clearly and succinctly
• Establishes and maintains key points of contact with internal teams (e.g., Finance, Marketing, Engineering). Builds working relationships with project stakeholders and business partners.
• Shares knowledge with business leaders (e.g., Senior Managers, Directors) on a particular area of expertise, leveraging and broadening deep technical/product knowledge and market awareness for a domain to inform strategic business decisions.

As the Principal Software Engineer on our team, you would have the opportunity to work on:

• ONNX: an open standard format for representing AI models, enabling AI developers to work on AI models with a variety of frameworks, tools, runtimes, and compilers.
• ONNX Runtime: ONNX based cross-platform, high performance ML inferencing and training accelerator.
• Foundry Local: an on-device AI inference solution offering performance, privacy, customization, and cost advantages. It integrates seamlessly into your existing workflows and applications through an intuitive CLI, SDK, and REST API.

Software Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $139,900 - $274,800 per year.

Software Engineering IC6 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $163,000 - $296,400 per year.
Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:

As a Principal Software Engineer on the team the common tasks of the job would include, but not be limited to

• Partnering with appropriate stakeholders to determine user requirements for one or more complex scenarios.
• Providing technical leadership for the identification of dependencies and the development of design documents for a product, application, service, or platform.
• Leading by example and mentoring others to produce extensible and maintainable code used across the company.
• Leveraging deep subject-matter expertise of cross-product features with appropriate stakeholders (e.g., project managers) to lead multiple product's project plans, release plans, and work items.
• Holding 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 seeking 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.
• Embodying our

As a Senior Software Engineer for Azure Compute, you will work on mission-critical systems that require a deep understanding of distributed computing, cloud infrastructure, and system reliability. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams to design and implement features that improve scalability, resiliency, and operational efficiency. Your contributions will directly impact the experience of customers running large-scale workloads on Azure.

This role offers the opportunity to work in a fast-paced and collaborative environment where innovation and continuous improvement are encouraged. You will help shape the future of Azure’s compute platform by influencing architectural decisions and contributing to the evolution of cloud-native infrastructure.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 4+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, OR Java, JavaScript, or Python
  • OR equivalent experience.

• 1+ year(s) of experience in incident management, debugging large-scale distributed systems, and collaborating across teams to align on complex technical issues.

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 6+ 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 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
  • OR equivalent experience.
• 1+ year(s) of experience with Microsoft Azure Software Development Kits (SDKs) and Representational State Transfer (REST) Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), along with a deep understanding of compute orchestration, asynchronous operations, and service reliability.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until October 17th, 2025.

• 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 mentor 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.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 4+ years technical engineering experience with coding in C++, C, C#, or Java
  • OR equivalent experience.
• 2+ years industry experience coding in C++.
• Proficiency in debugging complex multithreaded scenarios.

Preferred 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#, or Java
  • OR Master'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#, or Java
  • OR equivalent experience.
• Familiarity with network topologies and protocols and Windows Internals / Windows OS concepts.
• Familiar with modern C++ concepts and Standard Template Library (STL).
• Familiarity with cloud services.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until September 3, 2025.

• Develop and maintain protocol and transport stacks for Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) across multiple operating system architectures, with a primary focus on Windows.
• Instrument and optimize code to enhance performance and diagnosability.
  Innovate and implement new features to improve connection reliability and user experience in RDP.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to design a common transport framework and implement proactive alerting and testing to prevent regressions.
• Analyze customer feedback, incident data, and telemetry to identify areas for improvement.
• Mentor and support other developers by sharing best practices and technical guidance across the organization.