Principal Software Engineer

Overview

Join the Microsoft Turing Team and help shape the future of enterprise productivity through cutting-edge AI. We are responsible for the core systems that power the Microsoft 365 Chat Copilot for enterprise - a groundbreaking AI assistant used by hundreds of millions of users around the world. As an engineer on our team, you'll work side by side with world-class scientists and developers to bring large language models (LLMs) to life, at enterprise scale.

We're not just training and applying models - we're building intelligent systems that run them. This is your chance to engineer the critical infrastructure, platforms, and features that power the Microsoft Copilot - with a direct impact on how the world works. Recent launches like Analyst Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot | Microsoft Community Hub showcase the breadth and depth of the impact you'll help drive across the stack.

The Microsoft Turing team is an innovative engineering and research team working on state-of-the-art deep learning models to power end user experiences across the company. Software Engineers and Applied Scientists in the Turing team work together to push the boundaries of large-scale deep learning models on the Microsoft 365 Core world-class distributed training infrastructure.

As a Principal Software Engineer in the Turing team, you will leverage your skills and experience to help build the platform that powers enterprise Microsoft's Copilots. You will work closely with applied scientists and engineers on building and designing both backend platform capabilities as well as core copilot scenarios aimed at delighting our customers. You will be responsible for building scalable, performant, and cutting-edge features. This involves defining the architecture, implementation plan, ensuring everything is tested and robust, and improving processes to contribute to our best practices.

We're solving some of the most technically demanding problems in distributed systems, language models, and production-scale AI. Whether youre passionate about finding innovative uses to apply AI, systems design, intelligent orchestration and reasoning systems, or building resilient services - this is the team where engineers thrive.

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

Design

• Leads design discussions: Facilitates design meetings, creates design documents, and ensures alignment with project goals.

• Ensures system architecture: Designs system architecture that meets security, compliance, and scalability requirements.

Engineering Excellence

• Enhances and reuses developer tools: Develops and maintains tools that support code creation, testing, and deployment.

• Stays current with new trends: Continuously learns and adapts to new technologies and methodologies to improve product performance.

Implementation

• Mentors others: Guides team members to produce extensible and maintainable code through code reviews and pair programming.

• Leads implementation and deployment: Oversees the implementation and deployment of solutions, ensuring they meet quality standards.

• Breaks down project vision: Translates project vision into actionable milestones and guides the team in project estimation and planning.

Reliability and Supportability

• Acts as a Designated Responsible Individual (DRI): Monitors systems, responds to incidents, and restores services to ensure reliability.

• Leads efforts to reduce incident volume: Analyzes incident patterns and implements broad resolutions to minimize future incidents.

Understand User Requirements

• Partners with stakeholders: Collaborates with stakeholders to gather and understand user requirements and expectations.

• Incorporates continuous feedback: Uses feedback from users and stakeholders to iteratively improve designs and solutions.

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:

• Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, or a related field with 8+ years of relevant industry experience, or a bachelor's degree with 10+ years of relevant industry experience.
• Demonstrated experience designing and shipping AI-powered products or platforms, including experience with large language models, agentic systems, retrieval, or related technologies.
• Proven software engineering judgment, with the ability to translate emerging AI capabilities into reliable, maintainable, and scalable product experiences.
• Experience architecting and operating large-scale cloud or distributed systems, with a focus on reliability, performance, security, observability, and operational excellence.
• Proven ability to shape technical strategy, influence architectural decisions across organizational boundaries, mentor engineers, and deliver measurable customer outcomes in fast-moving and ambiguous environments.

#CAP #Copilot #msturing

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.