← All roles

Principal Software Engineer

Microsoft· Software Engineering
Apply on company site
United States – Multiple Locations$142.8k - $274.8kFull-timePosted 4w ago

About the role

Principal Software Engineer to define architecture, drive strategy, and deliver highly reliable cloud services at global scale within Azure Specialized, collaborating across engineering, product, networking, security, and operations teams.

Responsibilities

  • Define the long-term architectural direction for Azure Specialized platform services, leading design reviews and influencing technical strategy across organizations.
  • Drive engineering excellence, operational rigor, and architectural consistency while serving as a trusted technical advisor to engineering leadership and partner teams.
  • Design and evolve highly available distributed cloud services, improving scalability, resiliency, observability, security, and operational efficiency.
  • Partner across engineering teams to simplify and modernize cloud platform architectures, establish reusable platform patterns, and resolve complex technical challenges spanning multiple systems and stakeholders.
  • Drive the strategy and evolution of diagnostic and troubleshooting platforms, applying telemetry, analytics, and artificial intelligence-assisted engineering techniques to accelerate root cause analysis and reduce customer impact.
  • Improve platform supportability and issue resolution through data-driven operational insights, enabling faster identification, mitigation, and resolution of issues across Azure Specialized services.
  • Lead reliability improvements for mission-critical platform services by establishing service health frameworks, Service Level Objectives, operational metrics, and governance models while reducing recurring incidents and operational risk.
  • Mentor engineers, strengthen technical leadership across teams, improve engineering productivity and effectiveness, and foster a culture of technical excellence, ownership, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

Qualifications

  • 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.

Skills

Required:Architectural design leadershipDistributed systems
Nice to have:Telemetry and observabilityMentoring

Benefits

  • Benefits and additional compensation may apply per location (see pay information link).
Last updated Sep 24, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Microsoft

Cloud ComputingConsumer ElectronicsSoftwareTechnologyliquid-ai-recruiting-target
Company profileWebsite

More open roles at Microsoft