Principal Site Reliability Engineer- CTJ- Secret
About The Position
Microsoft Substrate is the foundational cloud platform powering critical Microsoft services, including Exchange Online and M365 Copilot. It provides shared infrastructure, identity, messaging, storage, and service-to-service capabilities across Microsoft 365 and related cloud offerings. Its services operate globally and are designed to provide high availability, reliability, and security for demanding workloads. The Principal Site Reliability Engineer will set technical and operational direction for reliability across Substrate workloads, influencing architecture, reliability strategy, and engineering practices across teams and organizations. The role leads complex, multi-year initiatives, shapes how reliability is designed into systems, and models technical excellence, leadership, and Microsoft values, particularly in regulated, sovereign, or compliance-sensitive environments.
Requirements
- Doctorate in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field and at least 2 years of technical experience in software engineering, network engineering, or systems administration; or a master's degree in a related field and at least 3 years of such experience; or a bachelor's degree in a related field and at least 5 years of such experience; or equivalent experience.
- Must be able 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.
- Must have an active U.S. Government Secret Security Clearance and maintain or obtain the required clearance and customer screening requirements.
- Successful verification of the stated security clearance is required; clearance verification information must be provided before an offer of employment.
- U.S. citizenship verification is required due to citizenship-based legal restrictions.
Nice To Haves
- Doctorate in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field and at least 5 years of technical experience in software engineering, network engineering, or systems administration; or a master's degree in a related field and at least 8 years of such experience; or a bachelor's degree in a related field and at least 12 years of such experience; or equivalent experience.
- At least 7 years of technical experience working with large-scale cloud or distributed systems.
Responsibilities
- Define and drive reliability strategy, SLO frameworks, and operational best practices across Substrate workloads in highly regulated environments.
- Participate as an actively engaged senior on-call engineer in on-call rotations and lead incident response for Substrate services in regulated environments.
- Provide hands-on leadership during complex or high-impact incidents, setting technical direction and response strategy.
- Lead high-quality post-incident reviews that produce durable, systemic engineering improvements across teams.
- Architect and deliver large-scale automation, observability, and self-healing solutions.
- Drive architectural decisions and define software engineering standards that embed reliability, security, and compliance in Substrate services.
- Influence service design and engineering decisions across organizational boundaries.
- Mentor senior and principal engineers and shape the long-term technical direction of the SRE discipline.
- Represent Substrate SRE perspectives with senior leadership and cross-functional partners.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Principal
