Microsoft
Principal Cloud Network Engineer
$143K–$304K
Redmond, WA · On-site · Principal · Full-time · Posted Nov 3, 2026
- Experience
- Required: 3+ years with a doctorate, 4+ with a master's, or 6+ with a bachelor's in network design, development, and automation; equivalent experience accepted. Preferred alternatives: 5+, 8+, or 12+ years, respectively. Also preferred: 3+ years delivering production network designs with live-site accountability and 1+ year developing quality management programs.
- Education
- Doctorate, master's, or bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Optical Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field; or equivalent experience.
About the job
Leads the strategy, architecture, and production improvement of network validation, automation, reliability, and AI-assisted engineering across a global, multi-vendor network.
What you'll do
- Design and lead end-to-end network validation, testing frameworks, and release-readiness standards.
- Lead complex network incident response and improve operational readiness, reliability, automation, and CI/CD systems.
- Define AI strategy for network engineering and provide technical leadership across teams and stakeholders.
What they ask for
- Doctorate in a related field and 3+ years of technical network design, development, and automation experience; OR master's and 4+ years; OR bachelor's and 6+ years; OR equivalent experience.
- Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements, including the Microsoft Cloud Background Check.
Nice to have
- Doctorate and 5+ years; OR master's and 8+ years; OR bachelor's and 12+ years of relevant technical experience; OR equivalent experience.
- 3+ years delivering network designs into production with live-site accountability, and 1+ year developing quality management programs.
Pay
USD $142,800 - $274,800 per year (base salary); USD $188,000 - $304,200 per year (base salary)
Tools
network operating systems, CI/CD, telemetry, packet captures, logs, control-plane, data-plane, AI
AI focus
Define AI strategy and build practical AI-assisted and agentic capabilities for network engineering, operations, troubleshooting, automation, and reliability, with evaluation, safety, observability, and human oversight.
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