Microsoft
Principal Software Engineer - FDE
$143K–$304K
United States +8 · On-site · Principal · Full-time · Posted Oct 20, 2026
- Location
- United States
Redmond, WA
Mountain View, CA
Austin, TX
Houston, TX
Chicago, IL
Cambridge, MA
New York, NY
Atlanta, GA - Experience
- 6+ years technical engineering experience with coding; preferred alternatives: Master's Degree and 8+ years, Bachelor's Degree and 12+ years, or equivalent experience.
- Education
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field, or equivalent experience.
- Visa sponsorship
- Microsoft is unable to sponsor a work visa for this role.
About the job
Leads customer-embedded engineering teams to design, build, deploy, and operate secure, scalable cloud and AI solutions that address complex business challenges.
What you'll do
- Lead end-to-end architecture and delivery of production systems, balancing reliability, performance, cost, and maintainability.
- Work with customer teams and stakeholders to define business problems, deliver solutions, and drive adoption.
- Build reusable engineering assets and mentor multidisciplinary teams while ensuring security and operational quality.
What they ask for
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field and 6+ years technical engineering experience coding in a named language, or equivalent experience.
Nice to have
- Experience designing, deploying, and operating AI or LLM-based solutions, including prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented approaches, model tuning, evaluation, data quality, and performance monitoring.
- Experience with cloud AI platforms (Azure ML, OpenAI, or similar); willingness to travel up to 25%.
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, Azure ML, OpenAI
AI focus
Design, deploy, and operate AI and LLM-based cloud solutions, including prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented approaches, model tuning, evaluation, and production monitoring.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative