Microsoft
Principal Software Engineer
$143K–$304K
Redmond, WA · On-site · Principal · Full-time · Posted Oct 13, 2026
- Experience
- 6+ years required; equivalent experience accepted. Preferred qualifications include 12+ years with a bachelor's degree, or 8+ years with a master's degree, or equivalent experience. Additional preferred experience: 5+ years professional software engineering and 3+ years building cloud services, distributed systems, or AI-powered systems.
- Education
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical discipline, or equivalent experience.
About the job
Designs and operates scalable cloud services and AI-powered cybersecurity capabilities for detecting, investigating, and responding to security threats.
What you'll do
- Build and operate real-time cloud services and data-processing systems to improve security analyst workflows.
- Develop AI-powered security features, including LLM-based agents and automated workflows, and own them through production deployment and improvement.
- Set technical direction, lead architecture and code reviews, mentor engineers, and collaborate across engineering, product, and security teams.
What they ask for
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline and 6+ years of technical engineering experience coding in C#, Java, C++, or other languages; or equivalent experience.
- Ability to meet required Microsoft, customer, and/or government security screening requirements, including passing the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.
Nice to have
- Experience building and shipping production AI-powered features; experience with machine learning frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow.
- Experience designing and operating cloud services, distributed systems, or AI-powered production systems; cross-disciplinary collaboration experience.
Pay
USD $142,800 - $274,800 per year (base salary); USD $188,000 - $304,200 per year (base salary)
Tools
Azure, C#, Java, C++, transformer-based models, embeddings, vector stores, PyTorch
AI focus
Builds AI-powered cybersecurity capabilities using LLMs, machine learning models, embeddings, vector stores, and agentic workflows; applies AI-assisted software engineering practices.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative