Principal Software Engineer

Overview

Microsoft is a company where passionate innovators come to collaborate, envision what can be and take their careers further. This is a world of more possibilities, more innovation, more openness, and the sky is the limit of thinking in a cloud-enabled world. Within Global Skilling Product Team, we are seeking a self-motivated, technically acumen Software Engineer for Azure Full Stack development to develop enterprise-grade features impacting millions of learners around the world who rely on Microsoft Skilling platforms for consuming the learning and skilling content across various across platforms.

The mission of the Global Skilling Product Team- (GSPT)- is to develop world-class, innovative Skilling Products & Experiences that inspire customers, partners, MCAPS sellers, and future generations to achieve more by skilling, upskilling, and reskilling, thereby reaching 100M+ learners. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their full potential each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world.

As a the Principal Software Engineer for Azure Full stack development, you will serve as a hands-on engineer and technical authority, spearheading the design and implementation of sophisticated learning and skilling solutions that enhance our Microsoft Skilling platforms and Learning which aligns with the Strategic goals and key Objectives established by WWL to reach 100M+ learners helping Ignite our Base and Lead with Learning. We envision a world where all skilling content will be accessible across various platforms leveraging the latest AI-assisted features. For instance, we will need to modernize skilling content operations and reimagine release at scale to enable more efficient ways of consumption across Learn, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, and other platforms. We will share highly effective practices with our customers to replicate in their own environments. In the future, we could potentially monetize these services through our learning partners.

If you enjoy working in a collaborative and agile environment where you can apply your technical skills and creativity into a security space and thrive on addressing real world problems, we are looking for you.

Microsoft's mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, and we're dedicated to this mission across every aspect of our company. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their highly qualified contributions each day. Join us and help shape the future of the world.

Responsibilities

The Principal Software Engineer is responsible for the following:

• Design, develop and maintain engineering infrastructure, tools, and services that power the CI/CD for Microsoft Learning (Skilling) platform and services.
• Develop software features for Skilling platforms, including requirement gathering, architecture, application and database design, development, testing, and deployment, while enforcing highly effective engineering practices to ensure high-quality, scalable, and secure solutions. Leverage AI and develop Copilot features within the application to enhance user experience and productivity.
• Site Reliability: Support and maintain existing services & integrations with LOB applications across the enterprise.
• Establish and enforce highly effective practices in coding, testing, and documentation to ensure high standards for code quality, performance, and service reliability.
• Improve the reliability and debuggability of test frameworks by integrating automation and gates.
• Develop and utilize AI/LLM models to analyze test failures, identifying root causes such as test flakiness or infrastructure issues.
• Transition manual testing efforts currently handled by vendor DRIs into automated processes.
• Leads junior Software Engineers, and collaborates with Product Managers, Designers and cross-functional teams to deliver high quality security solutions across platforms that ship to hundreds of millions of learners around the world.
• Leads by example within the team by producing extensible and maintainable. Optimizes, debugs, refactors, and reuses code to improve performance and maintainability, effectiveness, and return on investment (ROI). Applies metrics to drive the quality and stability of code, as well as appropriate coding patterns and highly effective practices.
• Work across organizations and directly with partners both in WWL and across Microsoft including other engineers and product leaders.
• Drives identification of dependencies and the development of design documents for our security features. Identifies other teams and technologies that will be leveraged, how they will interact, and when ones own system may provide support to others. Determines any dependencies associated with application or platform functionality for the solution/product area. Understands up and downstream effects of solutions and work provided to ensure appropriate security and performance, drives reliability in the solutions, and optimizes dependency chains and retrieves across teams.
• Drives identification of areas of dependency and overlap with other teams or team members and drives coordination. Communicates across teams and resolves conflicts between teams.

Mentorship, Technical Community, and Talent Scaling

• Mentor engineers; enhance architecture quality, engineering discipline, and Responsible AI rigor.
• Contribute to internal technical communities through documentation, skill-building sessions, and reusable engineering guidance-amplifying impact through others.

Other

• Embody our culture and values.

Qualifications

• Bachelors 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.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Masters Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python

• OR Bachelors Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 12+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python

• OR equivalent experience.

• 7+ years of experience in cloud development principles and patterns, particularly loosely coupled architectures, micro-services and DevOps model.

• 7+ years of experience in leading, managing, and driving technical and architectural dependencies.

• 7+ years of hands-on experience in developing applications using RESTful APIs, microservices architecture, ASP.NET with a focus on scalable and intelligent enterprise solutions.

• 3+ years of hands-on, production experience with infrastructure templates and scripts.

• Proficient IaaC templates such as ARM templates or Bicep. Experience building build and deployment pipelines from scratch.

• Proficiency in C#, .NET, React, JavaScript/TypeScript, or equivalent languages/frameworks.

• Observability and data driven mindset. Builds modules, components and pipelines with captured telemetry, error reporting and insightful dashboards

• Technical experience and knowledge in Enterprise-scale technical experience with cloud and hybrid infrastructures, architecture designs, migrations, and technology management. Have and development proficiency in:

• App Platform/Containers/Serverless (App Service, AKS, ACA, Functions)

• Azure Integration Service (APIM, Logic Apps)

• DevOps (CI/CD, Azure DevOps)

• Database (Azure SQL, Cosmos DB, and Azure Data Factory (ADF)

• Proven proficient problem solving and debugging skills.

• Proven experience optimizing cloud infrastructure for cost savings and operational efficiency.

• Solid knowledge of data structures, algorithms, and software design principles.

• Proven experience designing and shipping AI/ML or GenAI solutions, including one or more of:

• Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), enterprise search, vector retrieval.

• LLM orchestration and agentic workflows.

• AI evaluation/monitoring, safety and quality measurement.

• Proficient deal communication skills and ability to collaborate in a multi-disciplinary team consisting of Software Engineers, Program Managers, and Data Scientists.

• Working knowledge of tools like Azure DevOps or similar CI/CD platforms for integrating and managing test gates.

• Ability to work independently and as part of a team.

• Passion for learning new technologies and skills.

Software Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $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:

https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.