Microsoft
Principal Software Engineering Manager
$143K–$304K
Redmond, WA · On-site · Principal · Full-time · Posted Oct 8, 2026
- Experience
- Required: 6+ years technical engineering experience with coding, or equivalent experience. Preferred alternatives: 12+ years with a bachelor's degree, 8+ years with a master's degree, or equivalent experience; additional preferred experience includes 4+ years in each area listed in preferred qualifications.
- Education
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, or related technical discipline; OR equivalent experience.
About the job
Leads an engineering team building Azure deployment automation and cloud delivery systems for Microsoft Defender, improving deployment safety, reliability, and operational efficiency.
What you'll do
- Hire, coach, and develop engineers while setting priorities and delivering team results.
- Lead architecture, design, and technical execution for Azure deployment automation and infrastructure tooling.
- Partner across engineering and operations teams to automate deployment preparation, validation, and recovery, and use telemetry and incident learnings to improve reliability.
What they ask for
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline and 6+ years of technical engineering experience coding in languages including C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python; OR equivalent experience.
- Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements, including the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.
Nice to have
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field and 12+ years of technical engineering experience; OR Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field and 8+ years; OR equivalent experience.
- 4+ years in each of these areas: managing software engineers; leading production software/service teams; leading Azure infrastructure or deployment systems; and experience with CI/CD, infrastructure as code, Kubernetes, deployment validation and recovery, and reliability improvement across constrained cloud environments.
Pay
USD $142,800 - $274,800 per year (base salary); USD $188,000 - $304,200 per year (base salary)
Tools
Azure, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Python, Kubernetes
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative