Microsoft
Principal AI Software Engineer
$143K–$304K
Redmond, WA +2 · On-site · Principal · Full-time · Posted Oct 27, 2026
- Location
- Redmond, WA
Mountain View, CA
Hillsboro, OR - Experience
- Required: 6+ years of technical engineering experience, or equivalent experience. Preferred: 12+ years in systems software; 10+ years leading hardware/software co-design projects.
- Education
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field, or equivalent experience.
- Visa sponsorship
- The role requires Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening, including a Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.
About the job
Leads systems software prototyping and workload analysis to evaluate hardware/software co-designed memory and inference optimizations for Azure infrastructure.
What you'll do
- Build proof-of-concepts and evaluation frameworks for memory tiering, KV Cache management, and inference TCO reduction.
- Characterize and optimize AI inference workloads and analyze data movement across GPU, CPU, storage, and networking systems.
- Develop performance models and recommendations to inform hardware architecture and Azure fleet optimization.
What they ask for
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field and 6+ years of technical engineering experience coding in languages including C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python, or equivalent experience.
- Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements, including the Microsoft Cloud Background Check.
Nice to have
- 12+ years in systems software, with a track record guiding architecture and software enablement.
- 10+ years leading hardware/software co-design projects involving CPU and/or systems architecture.
Pay
USD $142,800 - $274,800 per year (base salary); USD $188,000 - $304,200 per year (base salary)
Tools
C, C++, Python, CUDA, NCCL, GPUDirect Storage (GDS), GPUDirect RDMA (GDR), vLLM
AI focus
Characterizes and optimizes LLM inference, including KV Cache capacity and placement, memory tiering, workload performance, and inference TCO.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative