Senior Software Engineer - VS Code (GitHub - CoreAI)

Overview

Visual Studio Code is where millions of developers turn ideas into working software. We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to help build its next generation of editing, development, and GitHub Copilot experiences. You will help to make complex developer workflows feel simple, from everyday coding and debugging to delegating work to AI. This is hands-on product engineering in a large TypeScript and Rust codebase: you will shape a feature or technical areas direction, implement it, and keep improving it after release. We value engineers who care about how software feels, make sound decisions amid ambiguity, and learn from what they ship.

About the team

We work in the open, with direct feedback from developers and extension authors. You will collaborate with engineers, designers, researchers, and product teams across our team, GitHub, and Microsoft. We combine community feedback, research, experiments, and engineering judgment to decide what to build. Performance, accessibility, extensibility, security, and developer control are part of the product, not finishing touches.

Examples of work

The role spans core VS Code and Copilot; illustrative projects include:

• Improve navigation and editing in large repositories without slowing down startup or typing.
• Build a Copilot workflow that helps developers delegate a coding task, inspect the changes, and validate them using VS Codes review, testing, and debugging tools.
• Extend VS Code APIs so new capabilities work reliably with existing extensions and remote development environments.
• Refine our existing engineering process with custom tools fine-tuned for throughput and quality.

Microsoft's mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As part of GitHub and CoreAI, we build developer tools that materially improve how software is written, reviewed, and shipped, while maintaining a culture of ownership, rigor, and technical excellence.

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

• Identify product and engineering opportunities, helping define what to build through user feedback, experimentation, and technical insight.
• Shape technical direction within your area, balancing near-term product needs with long-term maintainability.
• Lead hands-on design, implementation, testing, and delivery of VS Code features, coordinating contributors and partner-team dependencies as needed.
• Own outcomes after release: understand adoption, investigate quality issues, and use telemetry, evaluations, and user feedback to guide improvements.
• Improve responsiveness and reliability through profiling, debugging, and automated testing; strengthen the tools that let the team experiment and ship confidently.
• Work in the open: discuss designs publicly, investigate community-reported issues, and collaborate directly with developers and extension authors.
• Mentor engineers and improve technical decisions through constructive design and code reviews.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• Bachelors Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 4+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, JavaScript, or TypeScript or RUST 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

Preferred Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience, with a track record of independently delivering and maintaining production features or substantial components.
• Programming and application engineering skills, with the ability to become productive in a large TypeScript and Rust codebase.
• Experience leading technical design and hands-on delivery for complex projects involving multiple contributors, within one team or across partner teams.
• Product and engineering judgment, including the ability to turn an ambiguous user problem into a practical, maintainable solution.
• Communication and collaboration skills, including working across team boundaries and helping other engineers grow.

We welcome a range of product backgrounds; these are helpful experiences, not a checklist. Previous work on developer tools, open-source projects, or AI products is not required.

• Experience with TypeScript, JavaScript or Rust.
• Experience building interactive applications, with attention to performance, accessibility, or cross-platform behavior.
• Experience designing APIs, extension points, or reusable components.- Experience improving products through direct user feedback, telemetry, or experiments.
• Practical familiarity with AI coding tools and judgment about where they help, fail, or change development workflows.
• Experience building AI-powered features or contributing to developer tools or open-source projects.

Product and open source

https://code.visualstudio.com

https://github.com/microsoft/vscode

Software Engineering IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $119,800 - $234,700 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 $160,200 - $261,000 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.