← All roles

Principal Software Engineer - CoreAI

Microsoft· Software Engineering
Apply on company site
Redmond, WA$142.8k - $274.8kFull-timePosted 2w ago

About the role

Principal Software Engineer role within Microsoft’s Core AI organization, focusing on Azure AI Knowledge, retrieval systems, and AI-powered cloud services at scale. Lead architecture and delivery of large-scale cloud services and AI-powered products, with emphasis on secure, scalable, observable systems and collaboration across product, engineering, and partner teams.

Responsibilities

  • Lead the architecture, design, implementation, and delivery of large-scale cloud services and AI-powered products. Author design proposals, drive engineering execution, and ensure quality through comprehensive testing, automation, and security compliance.
  • Partner with stakeholders, customers, and cross-functional teams to understand requirements, incorporate continuous feedback, and define success metrics that drive product improvement and customer value.
  • Design and build secure, permission-aware retrieval and knowledge systems that integrate seamlessly with enterprise identity, authentication, and authorization platforms.
  • Drive service scalability, reliability, performance, and operational excellence across globally distributed cloud infrastructure. Establish telemetry, monitoring, and diagnostics to proactively identify and resolve issues.
  • Mentor and grow engineers through technical leadership, code reviews, and engineering best practices. Promote the development of high-quality, maintainable, and resilient software.
  • Lead project planning, experimentation, and deployment strategies. Evaluate technical tradeoffs, optimize solutions for business outcomes, and ensure safe, reliable releases with consideration for broader system impacts.
  • Own live-site operations, incident response, and root cause analysis. Develop operational playbooks and processes that improve service health, reliability, and recovery.
  • Collaborate closely with product managers, applied scientists, architects, and partner teams to deliver innovative AI experiences and foundational platform capabilities.
  • Analyze production telemetry, customer feedback, and usage patterns to identify opportunities for improving performance, quality, reliability, and cost efficiency.
  • Contribute to the architecture and evolution of foundational services that power Microsoft Foundry, AI agents, enterprise knowledge experiences, and next-generation retrieval platforms.
  • Champion engineering excellence through automation, developer productivity investments, and continuous process improvement while maintaining compliance with security, privacy, accessibility, and regulatory requirements.
  • Drive cross-team collaboration to resolve dependencies, align technical strategy, and deliver integrated solutions that meet customer and partner needs.

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.
  • Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements (Microsoft Cloud Background Check).

Skills

Required:Architecture leadershipSecurity and complianceCollaborative engineering
Nice to have:Distributed systemsAI/ML systems

Benefits

  • See compensation information link provided in description.
Last updated Oct 9, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Microsoft

Cloud ComputingConsumer ElectronicsSoftwareTechnologyliquid-ai-recruiting-target
Company profileWebsite

More open roles at Microsoft