Principal Software Engineer

Microsoft•Redmond, WA

10d•$142,800 - $304,200

About The Position

The Windows Shell & Services team is looking for a Principal Software Engineer to lead the technical vision, architecture, and delivery of next-generation Windows Search experiences. In this role, you will drive innovations across Search, File Explorer, Settings, and emerging AI-powered experiences, influencing both user engagement and business outcomes at global scale. As a technical leader, you will work across organizations to define strategy, solve complex engineering challenges, and deliver experiences that impact millions of customers every day. You will help shape the future of Windows Search through deep technical expertise, data-driven decision making, and customer-focused innovation. 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.

Requirements

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 6+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python.
OR equivalent experience.
Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role.
Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Nice To Haves

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical discipline AND 10+ years of software engineering experience, or equivalent practical experience.
Proven experience designing, building, and shipping large-scale software systems using object-oriented programming languages such as C++, C#, Java, or similar.
Experience leading architecture and technical strategy for complex customer-facing products or platforms.
Solid understanding of software design principles, distributed systems, scalability, reliability, and performance optimization.
Demonstrated ability to influence engineering direction across teams and drive alignment among diverse stakeholders.
Experience using data, experimentation, and customer insights to guide technical and product decisions.
Solid problem-solving and communication skills with the ability to navigate ambiguity and drive execution.
Deep understanding of search technologies, including query understanding, retrieval systems, search relevance, ranking, and result orchestration.
Experience building and shipping user-facing search experiences that improve customer satisfaction, engagement, and productivity.
Experience with AI-powered discovery experiences, semantic retrieval, grounding, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and large language model (LLM) integration into end-user products.
Solid understanding of experimentation, telemetry, and data-driven approaches to improving search quality and customer outcomes.
Experience designing APIs and platform capabilities that enable search and discovery experiences across multiple Windows surfaces.
Familiarity with Windows technologies, Shell experiences, WinRT, and modern client-platform architectures.
Experience driving technical direction across partner teams and influencing architecture, product strategy, and engineering execution.

Responsibilities

Define and drive the long-term technical vision and architecture for Windows Search experiences and platform capabilities.
Lead the design, implementation, and delivery of complex features spanning Windows clients, platform services, and intelligent retrieval systems.
Partner with Product Management, Design, Data Science, and Engineering teams to identify customer needs and translate them into impactful solutions.
Drive innovations in search quality, ranking, indexing, retrieval, AI-powered discovery, and personalization experiences.
Influence technical direction across multiple teams and organizations, helping align investments and resolve complex dependencies.
Balance customer experience, performance, quality, privacy, security, accessibility, and business goals when making architectural decisions.
Utilize telemetry, experimentation, customer feedback, and analytical insights to measure success and drive product improvements.
Lead technical reviews, architecture discussions, and engineering execution for strategic initiatives.
Mentor engineers and technical leaders across the organization while raising engineering excellence standards.
Serve as a technical leader during live-site incidents, reliability challenges, and critical customer-impacting issues, ensuring rapid diagnosis and recovery.
Drive modern engineering practices that improve availability, reliability, performance, efficiency, and operational excellence.