Microsoft
Principal Software Engineer
$143K–$304K
Redmond, WA · On-site · Principal · Full-time · Posted Oct 23, 2026
- Experience
- 6+ years with a bachelor's degree; alternatively, 8+ years with a master's degree or 12+ years with a bachelor's degree; equivalent experience is also stated.
- Education
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field, or Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field; or equivalent experience.
About the job
Leads the design, development, and adoption of shared engineering platforms, including AI-assisted capabilities that improve developer productivity, reliability, and operations.
What you'll do
- Set platform technical direction and lead initiatives from architecture through production adoption and operation.
- Build AI-assisted and agent-based engineering workflows, with evaluations and safeguards for trustworthy results.
- Develop platform capabilities for safe delivery, observability, recovery, and self-service; mentor engineers and lead across teams.
What they ask for
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 6+ years of technical engineering experience coding, or equivalent experience; stated alternatives include a master's degree and 8+ years or a bachelor's degree and 12+ years, or equivalent experience.
- Experience designing, building, and operating production distributed systems or shared platform services, and building platforms or developer tools adopted across teams.
- Hands-on experience integrating large language models or agents into engineering workflows, including tool integration, evaluation, permission boundaries, and human oversight.
- Ability to meet 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
- Not specified.
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
Develop AI-assisted and agent-based engineering workflows for troubleshooting, testing, migrations, and operational analysis; integrate models and agents with evaluations, safeguards, permission boundaries, and human oversight.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative