Principal Software Engineer

Overview

Are you a customer-obsessed, AI-curious problem-solver who thrives in an inclusive, collaborative global team? The Azure CXP team’s mission is to transform Microsoft Cloud customers into fans. Through our deep engineering engagements with customers and teams across Microsoft, we analyze and amplify customer needs and drive the vision to improve Cloud quality, security, and reliability. Our culture of growth mindset and empowerment are central to who we are and how we work.

We are customer-obsessed problem-solvers. We orchestrate deep engagements in areas like incident management, support, and enablement. We analyze and amplify those customer voices, both within our own team, and across the Cloud + AI team, bringing the customer connection to the Quality vision for Azure. We innovate ways to scale what we learn across our customer base. Diversity and inclusion are central to who we are, how we work, and what we enable our customers to achieve. We know that empowering our customers starts with empowering our team to show up authentically, work in ways that are best for them, and achieve their career goals. Azure Reliability team is a multidisciplinary engineering organization part of CXP dedicated to making, “Azure the safest and most reliable Cloud”.

We are the Azure Reliability team; a multidisciplinary engineering organization committed to making Azure the world’s safest and most reliable cloud. For Azure’s most critical services and products. Our software engineers work closely with product teams to enhance availability, reliability, observability, and operability across our planet-scale systems.

We prioritize long-term platform improvements through engineering over repetitive manual tasks. Increasingly, we leverage AI to detect anomalies, predict incidents, and automate operational workflows, amplifying our ability to scale reliability across Azure. Our teams contribute to product architecture, share knowledge, and code, and focus on building reusable solutions that benefit multiple teams and services.

Every day, our customers stake their business and reputation on our cloud. You can help #AzCXP provide our customers with the world-class cloud services they need to succeed.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day.

Qualifications

Required 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.
• 5+ years of experience analyzing modern distributed software design patterns and cloud systems architecture, including microservices, containers, load-balancing, queuing, caching.
• 5+ years of experience in building, shipping and operating reliable solutions.

Other Qualifications:

• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings: Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Familiarity with modern distributed software design patterns and cloud systems architecture, including microservices, containers, load balancing, queuing, caching.
• Experience as a technical lead or engineering manager.
• Experience working on large and unfamiliar codebases (millions of lines of code).
• Experience with open-source projects, Kubernetes, Linux and containers is desired.
• Proven track record in building, shipping, and operating reliable solutions.
• Proficiency in programming languages like C#/Java/Python.
• Experience with data technologies (SQL/NoSQL/etc.).
• Experience with Azure is a plus.
• Experience in AI adoption with tools like GitHub Copilot, Azure OpenAI and custom copilots to streamline development and reduce toil.

Software Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $139,900 - $274,800 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $188,000 - $304,200 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until October 26, 2025.

#AZCXP #AzRelJobs

Responsibilities

• Design and implement world-class distributed systems to support billions of users worldwide.

• Improve the reliability and resilience of key Azure products.

• Define and maintain system reliability goals through Service Level Objectives (SLOs).

• Enhance production systems with improvements in observability, telemetry, alerting, incident and change management, and deployment safety.

• Build reusable automation and scalable processes to support multiple engineering teams in achieving their reliability goals.

• Influence product architecture and roadmap to embed reliability as a core design principle.

• Contribute directly to product code to drive reliability improvements.

• Leverage AI technologies to detect anomalies, predict incidents, and automate operational workflows at scale.

• Design and develop secure, modular, reliable, testable, and observable distributed services and solutions.

• Collaborate with internal and external stakeholders to align efforts and deliver cohesive outcomes.

• Drive continuous improvement in engineering processes and codebases.

• Develop automation solutions to prevent or resolve service issues before they impact users.

• Apply AI tools and techniques to reduce operational toil and scale practices across complex environments.

• Gain domain knowledge of Microsoft’s business ecosystem and contribute to seamless, end-to-end user experiences.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.

 Industry leading healthcare

 Educational resources

 Discounts on products and services

 Savings and investments

 Maternity and paternity leave

 Generous time away

 Giving programs

 Opportunities to network and connect