Principal Software Engineer

The Intelligent Conversation and Communication Cloud (IC3) powers billions of real-time conversations across Microsoft Teams, Dynamics 365, and Azure Communication Services. The IC3 Data Platform team builds globally distributed infrastructure supporting analytics, service reliability, business intelligence, and AI-powered experiences.

Our multi-tenant platform processes thousands of governed workloads. The platform is expanding to support AI automation, including LLM-powered data processing, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), MCP-grounded agents, evaluation pipelines, and agentic workflows.

We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to provide hands-on technical leadership. This role will define the architecture and lead development of secure, self-service AI and data orchestration capabilities using Azure, Kubernetes, Apache Airflow, and open-source technologies.

Responsibilities include making architectural decisions spanning distributed systems, AI orchestration, identity, privacy, compliance, reliability, and multi-tenant design; writing and reviewing production code; establishing engineering and operational standards; and guiding solutions from design through operation. Collaboration with engineering, product, security, compliance, and infrastructure teams will resolve ambiguous requirements and deliver scalable solutions.

The role will also advance AI-assisted engineering while maintaining human review, automated testing, security, and production-quality standards, mentoring engineers, and influencing technical direction across Microsoft organizational boundaries.

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.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and development of large-scale, self-service AI, agentic, and data-platform capabilities and frameworks, including data and LLM orchestration, skills, tools, memory, retrieval, evaluation, observability, and governance.
• Advance AI-native software development through coding agents, agentic workflows, and harness engineering.
• Drive cross-team technical alignment by partnering with engineering and product teams across Microsoft to define requirements and deliver trusted, end-to-end data solutions.
• Drive innovation by leveraging Microsoft Azure, AI technologies, and open-source frameworks such as Airflow, Spark, and Flink to modernize data platforms and enable next-generation communication experiences.

Qualifications

Required 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.

Other Requirements:

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:

• 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.
• Experience with AI-native software development, including using agent harnesses such as GitHub Copilot CLI and coding agents, orchestrating multi-step agentic workflows across the software development lifecycle, and reviewing agent-generated code and pull requests with production-grade rigor.
• Extensive experience architecting, developing, and operating reliable, large-scale, globally distributed production systems, particularly data infrastructure.
• Hands-on experience with one or more of the following technologies: Airflow, Spark, Flink, Kafka, Azure Data Factory, Kubernetes, or Event Hubs.
• Experience designing and delivering generative AI solutions, including RAG, LLM orchestration, agentic workflows, AI evaluation and monitoring, or quality measurement.
• Demonstrated ability to influence without authority, align teams, and build effective partnerships with engineers, product managers, and leaders.
• Demonstrated technical leadership, problem-solving, and communication skills, including the ability to communicate effectively in spoken and written English.
• Solid understanding of data privacy, compliance, and security in large-scale distributed systems.

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.