Microsoft
Principal Software Engineer
$143K–$304K
Redmond, WA +2 · On-site · Principal · Full-time · Posted Sep 21, 2026
- Location
- Redmond, WA
New York, NY
Mountain View, CA - Experience
- 6+ years technical engineering experience; preferred alternatives: 8+ years with a Master's Degree, or 12+ years with a Bachelor's Degree, or equivalent experience.
- Education
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field, or equivalent experience.
About the job
Leads the technical direction and development of Microsoft Copilot’s offline evaluation platform, including how agentic experiences are simulated, measured, and reliably scored at scale.
What you'll do
- Set platform strategy and define reproducible evaluations, metrics, and scorecards that inform what ships.
- Architect an agent-first platform and improve reliability across dependencies under sustained, growing load.
- Define end-to-end evaluation of agentic experiences and mentor engineers while modernizing the platform.
What they ask for
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 6+ years technical engineering experience coding in listed languages OR equivalent experience.
- Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements, including the Microsoft Cloud Background Check.
Nice to have
- Deep experience with large-scale distributed systems and reliability engineering.
- Experience with agentic systems, AI/ML evaluation, measurement, or benchmarking.
Pay
USD $142,800 - $274,800 per year (base salary); USD $188,000 - $304,200 per year (base salary)
Tools
C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Python
AI focus
Builds and leads an AI-first evaluation platform, measuring Copilot agent behavior and enabling autonomous agents to operate, extend, and help heal the system.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative