Principal Software Engineer

Overview

What would it take for a cloud fleet to recover from failures, adapt to changing demand, and continuously improve - with engineers setting direction instead of driving every action? We are building toward that future for Microsoft 365: autonomous fleet management that turns operational intent into safe, reliable action at scale.Our team builds the compute infrastructure that makes this possible - from provisioning and resource management to deployment, recovery, and optimization. The challenge is more than adding AI to existing workflows. It is evolving the distributed systems at the heart of the fleet so that engineers and agents can understand what is happening, decide what to do, and act safely - even when systems fail and conditions change. We are bringing together resilient infrastructure, agent-ready capabilities, and agents that put those capabilities to work: provisioning capacity, responding to events, guiding service teams, and driving hands-free recovery and optimization where safe. Our ambition is to change how M365 operates its compute fleet - with greater autonomy, higher efficiency, and resiliency built in. As a Principal Software Engineer, you will help define that future and build the foundations that make it real.

We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to provide hands-on technical leadership for compute provisioning and fleet-management infrastructure, and guide its evolution toward safe, agent-led operations.You will shape the distributed systems, control planes, and operational capabilities that manage the compute lifecycle - from provisioning and deployment to recovery and optimization. This is a core infrastructure role: success depends on sound architecture, production-quality engineering, and systems that remain reliable under scale, failures, and changing demand.You will set technical direction for modernizing these foundations and exposing them through agent-ready APIs and tools, including Model Context Protocol (MCP) interfaces and a shared fleet knowledge and action layer. You will also lead the development of long-running, event-driven, and customer-concierge agents that use these capabilities to investigate issues, coordinate work, and manage the fleet within clear safety boundaries.You will turn ambiguous infrastructure problems into durable platform capabilities, lead investments across system and team boundaries, and balance near-term delivery with long-term architectural direction. Through hands-on design and implementation, cross-team alignment, and mentorship, you will raise the bar for provisioning reliability, recovery, compute efficiency, and safe automation. 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

• Set technical direction for compute provisioning and fleet-management infrastructure, translating ambiguous requirements into a coherent architecture, modernization roadmap, and execution plan.
• Architect and deliver reliable resource-provider APIs, distributed control planes, and orchestration systems for provisioning and managing compute resources at fleet scale.
• Solve complex distributed systems problems across provisioning, capacity, deployment, recovery, and optimization, balancing performance, compute efficiency, fault isolation, and resiliency.
• Build agent-ready interfaces, including MCP tools and a shared fleet knowledge and action layer, that give agents consistent access to resource state, operational context, and controlled management capabilities.
• Design and deliver long-running, event-driven, and customer-concierge agents that use platform capabilities to provision resources, investigate issues, recover services, and optimize fleet operations.
• Establish identity and authorization, policy enforcement, bounded actions, observability, rollback, and human-approval mechanisms that make agent-led operations safe, auditable, and recoverable.
• Lead architecture and delivery across infrastructure, service, and partner teams; resolve technical tradeoffs, align interfaces and dependencies, and drive shared commitments from design through production.
• Use production telemetry, customer feedback, fault testing, and agent evaluations to improve provisioning reliability, recovery outcomes, resource utilization, and operational safety.
• Stay hands-on in design, implementation, and production troubleshooting while mentoring engineers and creating leverage through simple abstractions, reusable components, and clear technical guidance.
• Champion operational excellence by reducing toil and enabling hands-free recovery and optimization where safe, with clear escalation paths when human judgment is needed.

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.

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 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 Bachelor's 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 architecting and shipping large-scale distributed systems or cloud compute infrastructure, such as provisioning systems, resource-management services, or distributed control planes.
• Demonstrated technical leadership across multiple teams, including setting architectural direction, modernizing existing systems, and delivering through complex dependencies.
• Experience building reliable orchestration, automated recovery, or resource-optimization systems; experience with production AI agents or agent-ready APIs and tools is a plus.
• Experience designing resilient systems that handle partial failures and safely coordinate long-running operations, with strong identity, authorization, observability, and recovery mechanisms.
• Demonstrated hands-on engineering depth and a track record of simplifying complex infrastructure through durable abstractions, maintainable code, and sound distributed systems design.
• Experience using production telemetry, experimentation, fault testing, and customer signals to improve reliability, performance, resource efficiency, and operational outcomes.
• Ability to communicate technical strategy and tradeoffs clearly, build alignment across system and team boundaries, and mentor engineers through complex design and delivery challenges.

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.