Principal Security Engineer

Microsoft•Redmond, WA

About The Position

The Cloud & AI organization accelerates Microsoft’s mission and bold ambitions to ensure that our company and industry is securing digital technology platforms, devices, and clouds in our customers’ heterogeneous environments, as well as ensuring the security of our own internal estate. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world. Microsoft is one of the largest enterprise service companies in the world. Are you ready to take your career to another level at Microsoft? The Azure Security DevSec team is looking for a Principal Security Engineer to join us in securing services in the Microsoft Cloud. We work with service teams across Microsoft to evaluate and improve their security posture in the cloud, continuously moving the needle across multiple dimensions of their design, development and deployment security. In this role, you will collaborate with teams across Microsoft Azure to dive deep and evaluate the Security promises and risk posed by and to service ecosystems, recommend systemic mitigations, innovate on remediations for new issue ecosystems, recommend systemic mitigations, innovate on remediations for new issue classes, contributing to the feedback loop that can help achieve these outcomes at scale. 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. In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day.

Requirements

Master's Degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Risk Management, Cyber Security, or related field AND 4+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large scale computing, threat modeling, cyber security, or anomaly detection OR Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Risk Management, Cyber Security, or related field AND 6+ years experience in software development lifecycle, large scale computing, threat modeling, cyber security, or anomaly detection OR equivalent experience.
Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role.
Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft background and Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Nice To Haves

Demonstrated hands-on experience with identifying and exploiting security vulnerabilities across cloud (Azure/AWS/GCP), identity (Entra ID / Active Directory), Windows and Linux endpoints, network.
Experience in customer-facing or consulting roles delivering security outcomes to executive audiences; ability to move fluently between deep technical detail and business impact.
5+ years experience performing security assessments and penetration testing.
5+ years experience securing cloud computing environments across known across one of the known Cloud providers (Azure/AWS/GCP).
5+ years of experience with coding or scripting in languages such as Python, C#, C++, Go, PowerShell, .NET, Rust, or other comparable programming languages, including building and maintaining security tooling.

Responsibilities

Perform security reviews and deep dives for on cloud-hosted service ecosystems in Microsoft Azure, helping understand the security promise posture, risks to the target ecosystem and broader Azure.
Security expertise in at least one of the following Core areas : virtualization, memory safety (C/C++), Networking protocols, Cloud security, Kernel security, etc.
Drive secure-by-design improvements by developing security guidance, reference architectures, and practical remediation strategies that help teams address systemic security challenges and architectural anti-patterns.
Bring a growth mindset to tackle new and challenging problems every day, in an inclusive team environment
Innovate new approaches to solving security at cloud scale.
Ability to be a strong technical communicator, lead stakeholder discussions and drive long-term partnerships across Azure organizations.
Influence security outcomes across high-impact Microsoft services by working directly with engineers, architects, and product leaders to prioritize risks and accelerate security improvements.
Leverage AI and automation capabilities to scale security assessments, improve risk identification, and increase security coverage across complex product portfolios.
Champion security excellence by mentoring engineering teams, enabling self-service security capabilities, and fostering secure development practices across the organization.