Principal Software Engineer

Microsoft • Redmond, WA

1d • $142,800 - $304,200

About The Position

The Principal Software Engineer will help define the technical vision and architecture for Microsoft Security’s Agent Platform, which enables teams to build and operate secure, reliable, scalable, and efficient AI agents across security scenarios. The role drives foundational platform capabilities and establishes engineering patterns for production-grade agents, turning emerging AI technologies into robust solutions at Microsoft scale.

The engineer will design and deliver platform systems and abstractions that serve both developers building agents and customers using agent-powered experiences. This includes simplifying developer and user workflows while upholding security, reliability, performance, and operational standards. The role also provides technical leadership across teams and contributes directly to complex engineering work.

Requirements

• Bachelor'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.
• 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

• Significant experience architecting and delivering large-scale distributed systems, cloud platforms, developer platforms, or other mission-critical services, with deep understanding of reliability, scalability, security, performance, and operational excellence.
• Demonstrated ability to provide technical leadership across teams, drive complex architecture from concept to production, and influence engineering direction across organizational boundaries.
• Experience with AI/ML platforms, generative AI, LLM-based applications, agent frameworks, or AI infrastructure, including understanding of AI systems' reliability, evaluation, security, and operational challenges.
• Understanding of cloud-native architecture and distributed systems, including containers, orchestration, service-to-service communication, identity, observability, and large-scale data systems.
• Experience designing developer platforms, APIs, SDKs, or extensible platform abstractions, with appreciation for developer productivity and platform usability.
• Product and customer mindset, with demonstrated ability to translate complex technical systems into simple, intuitive, high-quality user experiences.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the technical direction for the Agent Platform, including foundational capabilities, extensibility models, interfaces, and end-to-end system design.
• Design, build, and deliver large-scale systems that enable AI agents to operate securely, reliably, efficiently, and at scale, including isolation, identity and access controls, observability, resiliency, and operational safeguards.
• Establish and implement engineering patterns and standards for production-grade agents, including agent orchestration, tool integration, context and state management, evaluation, monitoring, and lifecycle management.
• Build platform capabilities and developer abstractions that simplify infrastructure complexity and help teams build, onboard, test, deploy, and operate agents consistently.
• Drive end-to-end user and developer experience improvements, simplifying complex workflows while maintaining security, reliability, performance, and operational standards.
• Partner with engineering, product, security, research, and other platform teams to turn evolving AI technologies and security requirements into production-ready platform capabilities.
• Provide technical leadership across organizational boundaries, contribute to complex engineering problems, identify technology gaps, mentor engineers, and raise engineering standards.
• Embody Microsoft's Culture and Values.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal