Principal Software Engineer - Microsoft Substrate Data Plane team M365 Copilot App
About The Position
The Microsoft Substrate Data Plane team builds foundational services that enable Microsoft 365 experiences at planetary scale, processing and serving billions of signals, messages, documents, and interactions across Exchange, Teams, Copilot, and other AI-powered experiences. The Principal Software Engineer will help shape intelligent data services and agent-enabled platforms by leading the architecture, development, and operation of large-scale distributed systems supporting Copilot, AI agents, search, retrieval, indexing, and data-processing workloads across Microsoft 365. The role involves building highly available, low-latency cloud services and platform capabilities, delivering end-to-end intelligent experiences in collaboration with product and engineering teams, improving service health through telemetry and automation, and influencing long-term platform strategy. The engineer will also mentor colleagues and promote innovation, ownership, and continuous improvement.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 6+ years of technical engineering experience coding in languages such as C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python, or equivalent experience.
Nice To Haves
- Master's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 8+ years of technical engineering experience coding in languages such as C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python, or equivalent experience.
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 12+ years of technical engineering experience coding in languages such as C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python, or equivalent experience.
- Experience with modern AI-driven software development practices, tools, and feedback loops, using AI to accelerate engineering velocity, enhance developer productivity, and improve software quality.
Responsibilities
- Design, build, and operate large-scale, highly available cloud services that power Microsoft 365 experiences for billions of requests and millions of users worldwide.
- Drive architecture, development, and delivery of distributed systems focused on scalability, reliability, performance, security, and operational excellence.
- Develop platform capabilities for AI-powered experiences, including agent orchestration, tool execution, data access, grounding, and workflow automation.
- Partner with product teams, service owners, and platform engineers to deliver intelligent, end-to-end experiences across Microsoft 365.
- Use telemetry, automation, and AI-assisted diagnostics to improve service health, accelerate incident mitigation, and enhance engineering productivity.
- Lead complex technical initiatives across teams, influence long-term platform strategy, and drive engineering best practices.
- Mentor engineers and foster a culture of innovation, ownership, and continuous improvement.
- Embody Microsoft's culture and values.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Principal
