Microsoft
Principal SWE Lead
$143K–$304K
Redmond, WA · On-site · Principal · Full-time · Posted Oct 2, 2026
- Experience
- 6+ years technical engineering experience; additional qualifications list alternatives of a Master's Degree and 8+ years, a Bachelor's Degree and 12+ years, or equivalent experience. Also lists 10+ years of professional software design and development experience as a preferred qualification.
- 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 the architecture, development, deployment, and operation of agentic AI systems that improve Microsoft support experiences, while setting technical direction and guiding engineering teams.
What you'll do
- Design, build, and operate secure, reliable AI solutions, workflows, diagnostics, and supporting platforms.
- Establish architecture, engineering practices, evaluation, testing, monitoring, and operational readiness for production AI systems.
- Influence cross-organizational technical decisions, mentor engineers, and partner with support, product, security, and other teams.
What they ask for
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 6+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, 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.
- Hands-on experience building applied AI systems, including generative AI, large language models, or autonomous agents.
- Experience designing, building, deploying, and operating highly available, secure, and scalable cloud services.
Nice to have
- Experience with Azure AI Foundry, Copilot Studio, Power Platform, Azure services, or comparable enterprise AI and cloud platforms.
- Expertise in agent platforms, multi-agent orchestration, retrieval-augmented generation, knowledge systems, AI evaluation, prompt engineering, model selection, or ML infrastructure.
Pay
USD $142,800 - $274,800 per year (base pay); USD $188,000 - $304,200 per year (base pay)
Tools
C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Python, Azure AI Foundry, Copilot Studio
AI focus
Builds and deploys agentic AI for support, including diagnostics, orchestration, retrieval, evaluation, and production operations.
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