Principal Software Engineer

Microsoft • Redmond, WA

2d • $142,800 - $304,200

About The Position

The service-to-service authentication team provides the backbone that secures all non-human communication at Microsoft, spanning both Microsoft-internal services and customer-owned workloads and authenticating and validating billions of transactions per hour across millions of enterprises. We build and operate services and experiences that power everything from core Azure infrastructure to critical customer workloads and AI agents. As a foundational dependency of the cloud and a prime target for sophisticated threat actors, we engineer every capability with an uncompromising focus on security, resilience, and reliability.

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.

#MSFTSecurity #Identity

Requirements

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR equivalent experience.

Nice To Haves

• Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 10+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 12+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR equivalent experience.
• 6+ years of experience designing and implementing features of high-scale distributed cloud services
• 3+ years of experience as a technical lead, driving strategic decisions and delivering high-impact technical results
• 3+ years of technical leadership in defining and building developer experiences and scalable systems, preferably in the Generative AI, Machine Learning domain.
• 2+ years of hands-on experience designing SDKs or client-side frameworks, with a deep interest in performance engineering, latency reduction, and efficient resource utilization.
• Experience leading cross-functional engineering efforts across distributed teams.
• Experience delivering customer-facing software products or platform capabilities in production environments.
• Demonstrated proficiency around leveraging AI to build AI systems and a passion to make this technology accessible to everyone
• Proven record of identifying challenges, making clear judgment calls on tradeoffs, and making systemic changes for lasting impact, while bringing value to customer quickly.
• Clarity in communication and ability to influence without authority when stakes are high.
• 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 background and Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Responsibilities

• Define and own the long term technical strategy for service to service authentication, aligning that vision with organizational goals and communicating it effectively to senior leadership and other stakeholders
• Translate long term strategy into actionable shorter-term execution plans by driving technical and organizational consensus across multiple engineering teams, partner organizations, customers, and leadership, and ensuring successful delivery
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship across teams delivering security and resilience critical capabilities, setting architectural direction and raising the bar on quality through design leadership, code reviews, and direct hands-on technical engagement and coding
• Own and drive engineering fundamentals at the platform level, shaping investment priorities and proactively identifying and addressing systemic risks related to performance, scale, resilience, testability, and security across the organization
• Lead innovation in the application of AI by defining strategy and guiding adoption of AI driven tools to improve engineering productivity, while also shaping and delivering AI agents that automate operational and engineering workflows at scale
• Own live site excellence for the platform by serving as an oncall during high severity production events, and by engaging deeply in the pre-mortem and post-mortem processes to drive durable learnings and systemic fixes across multiple services

Benefits

• Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

What This Job Offers

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