Principal Security Engineer
About The Position
The Microsoft Offensive Research & Security Engineering (MORSE) team seeks a Principal Security Engineer to help secure Microsoft products and devices. MORSE is responsible for securing Microsoft operating systems and platform technologies, cloud platforms, and virtualization technologies used by over a billion customers worldwide. The role spans discovering and mitigating security vulnerabilities: identifying weaknesses in systems, assessing their impact, and driving protections that improve Microsoft platform security at scale. The engineer partners with teams across Windows, Azure, and platform infrastructure to architect security solutions and influence how systems are designed and built. It is suited to engineers interested in deep systems work, complex problems, and high-impact security outcomes. The role requires technical leadership across teams, including setting direction, breaking down complex problems, delivering security initiatives, and mentoring peers. Candidates must meet Microsoft, customer, and/or government security screening requirements, including passing the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire or transfer and every two years thereafter.
Requirements
- Master's degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, or a related field and 4+ years of experience in security or a related field; OR bachelor's degree in one of those fields and 6+ years of experience in security or a related field; OR equivalent experience.
- Ability to meet Microsoft, customer, and/or government security screening requirements, including passing the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire or transfer and every two years thereafter.
Nice To Haves
- Public or internal track record of relevant security research.
- Understanding of operating system security fundamentals, including kernel or low-level platform components.
- Experience performing vulnerability research, including code review, fuzzing, reverse engineering, or exploit development.
- Experience developing or applying mitigations, such as memory safety protections, sandboxing, or platform hardening techniques.
- 4+ years of experience in security-related elements of software engineering or another security-related field.
- 4+ years of experience with systems-level programming languages such as C, C++, or Rust.
Responsibilities
- Drive identification and analysis of security vulnerabilities across operating system and platform components through design review, code review, fuzzing, and variant analysis.
- Develop and influence mitigations and protections that reduce risk across platforms and improve resilience against classes of vulnerabilities.
- Advocate for security with engineering teams, integrate security into the development lifecycle, influence design decisions, and improve secure engineering practices.
- Autonomously coordinate and collaborate across broad groups at Microsoft, devising and advocating for broadly applicable solutions.
- Contribute to developing and scaling security tooling, detection capabilities, or analysis techniques to broaden coverage and detect vulnerabilities earlier.
- Partner across organizations to translate security findings into systemic improvements and measurable security outcomes.
- Stay current on attacker techniques, emerging vulnerability classes, and industry trends, applying this knowledge to improve Microsoft's security posture.
- Provide technical leadership within and across teams through direction setting, problem decomposition, and delivery of complex security initiatives.
- Mentor and coach peers on new approaches and best practices.
- Coordinate across teams and lead resolution of vulnerabilities, threat attacks, and security issues.
Stand Out From the Crowd
Upload your resume and get instant feedback on how well it matches this job.
What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Principal
