Principal Software Engineer(s) + Senior Software Engineer(s)

Microsoft•Redmond, WA

About The Position

Microsoft Security is building AI-powered capabilities to help defenders detect, investigate, and respond to threats with speed and precision while keeping people in control of critical decisions. Across Data Platform & Graph and Agent Runtime & Orchestration in Perception Platform, the teams build data foundations and runtime services that help AI agents triage alerts, conduct multi-step investigations, and take governed action. Agents use secure identities and clear boundaries, coordinate and hand off work, recover from failures, and provide visibility into what they did and why. Depending on the team, the role may focus on large-scale security data and graph infrastructure or the platform and runtime that enable security agents to coordinate investigations and governed actions. The services must be secure, reliable, observable, and effective at Microsoft scale. Senior Software Engineers own significant services or components from design through production, make sound engineering trade-offs, and collaborate across teams to improve customer outcomes. Principal Software Engineers shape technical direction across larger systems, resolve complex architectural challenges, and align teams around durable solutions. Engineers at both levels use production signals and customer feedback to improve quality, reliability, and cost. The teams are led by David Weston and Pankaj Naik.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline and 4+ years of technical engineering experience coding in languages including C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python, 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.
6+ years of experience in Java, C++, C, or another object-oriented language, with a strong understanding of data structures, algorithms, and distributed systems.
6+ years of experience building, shipping, and operating production-grade software, online services, or fault-tolerant distributed systems.
6+ years of experience designing secure, maintainable, well-tested, and performant solutions, using debugging, code reviews, test strategies, and deployment automation to improve quality.
6+ years of experience translating customer needs into technical designs, evaluating architectural trade-offs, and working across teams to resolve dependencies.
6+ years of experience applying security standards and hardening services across layers.
Curiosity, sound judgment, customer empathy, and a collaborative approach to difficult problems.

Nice To Haves

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 8+ years of technical engineering experience coding in languages including C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python, or equivalent experience.
Master's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 6+ years of technical engineering experience coding in languages including C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python, or equivalent experience.
Experience launching new products using modern development practices.
Familiarity with agile methods, test-driven development, or AI tools across the software development lifecycle.
6+ years of experience setting technical direction and aligning multiple teams on complex solutions.

Responsibilities

Senior: Lead the design, delivery, and production operation of significant data-platform, distributed data-service, or agent-runtime components, depending on the team.
Senior: Build reliable batch or streaming ingestion and processing systems, or distributed services supporting security investigations, analytics, and graph-based workloads.
Senior: Make sound trade-offs across data quality, performance, reliability, and cost.
Senior: Use telemetry, tracing, quality measures, and customer feedback to improve scalability, security, recovery, and customer outcomes.
Senior: Own live-site health and incident response for components; strengthen testing, deployment practices, and service resilience.
Senior: Partner across product and engineering teams to resolve dependencies, advocate for customer security and privacy, and mentor engineers through design and code reviews.
Principal: Set architectural direction for major data-platform, distributed data-service, or agent-runtime capabilities.
Principal: Align teams on durable approaches to scale, reliability, security, and cost.
Principal: Define technical approaches for large-scale data platforms, batch or streaming pipelines, and services supporting security investigations, analytics, or graph-based workloads, as relevant to the team.
Principal: Lead cross-team decisions on data quality, observability, recovery, performance, and production operations.
Principal: Prototype alternatives and resolve ambiguous, high-impact architectural challenges.
Principal: Establish engineering patterns that improve the security, resilience, and operating efficiency of data-intensive services across the platform.
Principal: Partner with product, applied science, and engineering leaders to turn customer needs into shared platform capabilities; mentor engineers and raise the bar for design, code quality, and live-site excellence.