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Principal Software Engineer

Microsoft· Software Engineering
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Redmond, WA$142.8k - $274.8kfull-timePosted 4d ago

About the role

Founding technical leader for the next generation of a commerce platform. Define engineering direction, system designs, and reusable patterns to establish foundation, standards, and culture for a future commerce engineering team. Hands-on IC with cross-functional influence, focusing on delivering a modern, scalable, secure commerce platform.

Responsibilities

  • Own the end-to-end technical strategy and system design for the commerce ecosystem and its evolution roadmap.
  • Define system boundaries, data ownership, interfaces, end-to-end flows, APIs, performance benchmarks, security, events, and integration patterns across product and SKU lifecycle, product information, pricing and promotions, storefront and content, search, cart and checkout, and the order lifecycle.
  • Connect commerce capabilities to payments, tax, fraud prevention, fulfillment, returns, identity and consent, and telemetry and analytics.
  • Establish clear engineering contracts with retained enterprise services so new and existing platforms can coexist without fragmented responsibilities or incompatible designs.
  • Set technical direction and drive material cross-system design decisions within the commerce scope.
  • Evaluate platform and build-versus-buy choices, configuration versus customization, interoperability, and vendor exit options.
  • Make tradeoffs explicit, review partner and vendor designs, and use prototypes, code review, benchmarks, and operational evidence to validate high-risk assumptions.
  • Define measurable engineering requirements for resilience, scalability, performance, observability, security, accessibility, and operating cost.
  • Design for transaction integrity, idempotency, reconciliation, failure recovery, and traceability across distributed APIs and event-driven workflows.
  • Guide modernization through implementation, migration, coexistence, release, cutover, and rollback.
  • Partner with delivery teams to verify that implementation and production behavior conform to the intended system design and remain accountable for technical integrity and platform evolution after launch.
  • Establish the engineering standards, reusable patterns, development practices, and decision mechanisms that will form the foundation of a future commerce engineering team.
  • Lead technical and code reviews, resolve conflicting approaches, and document important decisions, alternatives, rationale, owners, and implications.
  • Influence and mentor engineers and technical leads across partner teams without relying on direct reporting authority.
  • Create clear guardrails that enable teams to move independently while maintaining system coherence, production quality, and shared engineering standards.
  • Design and build the platform for AI-assisted and agentic commerce through well-defined interfaces and controlled access.
  • Enable agentic capabilities to evolve safely over time, with appropriate permissions, consent, auditability, and controls for customer-impacting actions.
  • Embody Microsoft’s culture and values.

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

Nice to have:Architectural leadershipDistributed systems designCommerce platform experience
Last updated Oct 23, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

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