Principal Software Engineer Manager

Microsoft•Redmond, WA

15d

About The Position

The Microsoft 365 Release & Delivery Experiences (RDX) team ensures that the world’s largest software franchises – including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams and OneDrive – are widely adopted, secure, and continuously updated with the latest innovations to over a billion users worldwide. We build experiential service platforms that help customers acquire Microsoft 365 Apps and stay current through predictable, safe and intelligent update experiences. Our investments emphasize security, compliance and privacy, while leveraging Azure‑based microservices to modernize IT Admin capabilities for enterprise serviceability. Through mission‑critical platforms such as Customer Platform Services (CPS) and the Microsoft Application Services Platform (MASP), RDX delivers end‑to‑end deployment experiences that enable: Update management for Microsoft 365 Apps. Enterprise policy management. Predictable Monthly Enterprise Channel delivery. Compliance‑aware change rollout. Safe onboarding of application changes across environments. Our platforms power high‑value customer‑facing scenarios that allow IT Administrators to manage updates confidently across diverse enterprise environments – improving release predictability while preserving customer trust. Design and implementation across RDX emphasizes deep understanding of customer experience, telemetry‑driven deployment intelligence, and continuous improvement informed by real‑world usage signals and feedback. We partner across Office application teams and platform engineering groups to deliver full‑stack deployment and release Role Overview We are seeking a Principal Engineering Manager to lead the architecture, delivery and live‑site excellence of RDX deployment services supporting CPS and MASP platforms. This role is responsible for enabling safe, compliant and data‑driven deployment of Microsoft 365 client updates across global enterprise environments by building and operating large‑scale distributed services that power release orchestration, rollout governance and automated recovery. You will work closely with Office application teams and partner platform organizations to ensure changes are introduced through staged, observable and reversible deployment workflows that minimize regressions and reduce customer‑visible impact. Your team will build and operate service infrastructure that: Enables IT Admin update and policy management experiences. Supports enterprise deployment governance scenarios. Leverages telemetry and customer feedback to validate release health. Automates mitigation and remediation of production regressions. Improves reliability and performance of Monthly Enterprise Channel delivery. This role requires solid experience in building and operating large‑scale distributed services, deep understanding of production deployment safety, and the ability to influence engineering outcomes across multiple product groups. 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.

Requirements

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.
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.

Nice To Haves

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering or related field (or equivalent experience).
12+ years of experience building and operating production software or services.
5+ years of engineering management experience.
Experience with large‑scale distributed systems and service architecture.
Experience in deployment safety, reliability engineering or release governance platforms preferred.
Experience working with data pipelines, experimentation systems or telemetry platforms.
Experience building or operating large‑scale distributed deployment or release orchestration platforms used by multiple product teams.
Experience running production cloud services with accountability for availability, reliability and live‑site health (SLO/SLA ownership).
Experience designing or operating safe deployment systems such as staged rollouts, experimentation frameworks, flighting or progressive exposure pipelines.
Familiarity with client‑service deployment workflows or enterprise update delivery models at scale.
Experience with telemetry pipelines, experimentation platforms, health monitoring systems or deployment validation signals.
Demonstrated ability to use production data signals (reliability, performance, usage) to drive release gating or automated rollback decisions.
Experience developing automated mitigation, remediation or recovery systems to minimize customer‑visible impact from regressions.
Experience onboarding partner engineering teams onto shared infrastructure or platform services.
Familiarity with compliance‑aware change management, privacy‑sensitive data collection or enterprise deployment governance models.
Experience partnering across multiple engineering organizations to drive adoption of shared platform capabilities.
Background in reliability engineering, deployment safety engineering or change management platforms in enterprise environments.
Experience improving production outcomes such as reduced customer escalations, lower regression rates, improved release predictability or faster recovery times.

Responsibilities

Platform & Services Ownership
Own CPS and MASP service architecture supporting Office client release and deployment workflows.
Drive reliability, scalability and availability of deployment services used across M365 app teams.
Enable Safe‑to‑Change release infrastructure through staged rollouts and automated safeguards.
Deliver automation‑first rollback and remediation capabilities to minimize customer impact.
Data‑Driven Deployment Intelligence
Define telemetry pipelines and data signals used for release gating, validation and rollback.
Leverage usage, reliability and performance data to inform deployment decisions.
Enable deployment observability across client environments and tenant segments.
Build predictive deployment health signals to proactively detect regressions.
Release Predictability & Customer Trust
Partner with Office Product teams to onboard changes safely through CPS/MASP.
Reduce customer escalations and regressions through service‑based deployment controls.
Improve release reliability across Monthly Enterprise Channel delivery.
Establish measurable deployment quality and recovery SLAs.
Engineering Leadership
Lead and grow a team responsible for Tier‑0 deployment services.
Coach engineers in distributed systems design, production resiliency and live‑site excellence.
Drive cross‑org collaboration across Office apps, platform engineering and compliance teams.
Influence engineering strategy across RDX and Office release ecosystem.