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Principal Software Engineer, AI Infrastructure

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

About the role

Principal Software Engineer responsible for designing and leading the AI traffic routing, capacity planning, and distributed system design for Azure OpenAI and related services. Focus on global resource orchestration, reliability, and AI-native development within a large-scale AI platform.

Responsibilities

  • Design - Own the overall design of how AI traffic and computing capacity are managed across regions. Guide design reviews and help the team weigh speed, reliability, scale, and cost when making choices.
  • Coding - Write and review clear, secure, well-tested code for routing, prioritization, and capacity planning. Set coding practices that other teams can reuse.
  • Implement - Work with product and program managers to turn the long-term vision into a dependable, step-by-step roadmap. Use feature flags and gradual rollouts to test changes safely, measure their impact, and roll back quickly when needed.
  • Reliability and Supportability - Take part in the on-call rotation as a designated responsible individual (DRI) for critical AI services. Lead reviews after incidents and improve monitoring so issues are caught early and happen less often.
  • Understand User Requirements - Partner with product, research, and infrastructure teams to understand what customers need as new AI models and capabilities launch. Work through shared dependencies cooperatively and make sure testing and support paths are ready before launch.
  • Engineering Excellence - Help keep our services secure, private, and compliant through threat modeling, safe deployment checks, and clear records. Mentor engineers and share what you learn about building reliable systems at scale.
  • AI-Native Development - Help the team use artificial intelligence (AI) tools and agents across the software development lifecycle (SDLC), from writing code and tests to investigating live issues. Follow Responsible AI practices and track how these tools improve quality and productivity.

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field - AND 6+ years technical engineering experience building distributed systems with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C#, Java, or Go OR equivalent experience.

Skills

Required:Distributed systems design and developmentC#, Java, or Go
Nice to have:Python, Docker, KubernetesAI/ML infrastructureOn-call / incident management
Last updated Oct 23, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

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