Principal Software Engineer

Microsoft•Redmond, WA

5d•$142,800 - $304,200

About The Position

Microsoft’s Azure Data engineering team builds analytics and data products, including Microsoft Fabric and Azure data services. Its mission is to build the data platform for AI and enable data-first applications. Within Microsoft Fabric, the Data Integration team helps organizations connect, move, and shape data across their data estates, preparing it for analytics, real-time insights, and AI. The Fabric Mirroring team is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to design, build, and operate a next-generation service that transfers large volumes of data from varied source systems to Fabric with minimal latency. The team works on advanced data movement and replication scenarios while maintaining user-friendly interfaces, collaborating across disciplines and using a range of technologies to deliver high-quality products quickly. The role leads technical work through code quality, debugging, architecture, testing, reliability, dependency management, and customer feedback. The position requires a Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire or transfer and every two years thereafter. The typical U.S. base pay range is $142,800–$274,800 per year. For specified locations in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City metropolitan area, the range is $188,000–$304,200 per year. Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline and 6+ years of technical engineering experience coding in languages such as 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

10+ years of software engineering experience.
Proven track record of delivering large-scale services or products.
Experience leading complex cross-team initiatives.
Deep expertise in distributed systems, cloud computing, system architecture, performance and scalability, and security and reliability engineering.
Proficiency in C#, Java, C++, Python, Go, and Azure technologies.
Strategic thinking, technical influence without direct authority, executive-level communication, strong stakeholder management, and organizational problem solving.

Responsibilities

Lead by example in producing extensible and maintainable code; optimize, debug, refactor, and reuse code to improve performance, maintainability, effectiveness, and return on investment.
Use metrics, coding patterns, and practices to improve code quality and stability.
Use debugging tools, logs, telemetry, and code to verify assumptions and investigate issues proactively and reactively; conduct retrospective debugging to identify root causes.
Review product code for quality, reliability, accuracy, scale-readiness, diagnosability, and maintainability; apply feedback and ensure coding standards and practices are followed.
Lead product and solution architecture discussions, develop architecture proposals and design documents, evaluate design hypotheses, and make some design decisions with minimal technical oversight.
Determine technologies and how they interact, and ensure architecture meets security and compliance requirements.
Create testing plans and define success criteria; choose effective testing approaches, improve test coverage and test suites, and drive integration of automation into testing.
Identify dependencies and document how teams and technologies interact, including back-end dependencies and up- and downstream effects; promote security, performance, reliability, and optimized dependency chains.
Work with stakeholders to align on user requirements and incorporate feedback into future designs and fixes.
Ensure continuous feedback loops measure customer value, usage patterns, and other actionable metrics.
Embody Microsoft’s culture and values.