Principal Software Engineer

Microsoft • Redmond, WA

12d

About The Position

Microsoft is a company where passionate innovators come to collaborate, envision what can be and take their careers further. This is a world of more possibilities, more innovation, more openness, and the sky is the limit thinking in a cloud-enabled world.

Microsoft’s Azure Data engineering team is leading the transformation of analytics in the world of data with products like databases, data integration, big data analytics, messaging & real-time analytics, and business intelligence. The products our portfolio include Microsoft Fabric, Azure SQL DB, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure PostgreSQL, Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Service Bus, Azure Event Grid, and Power BI. Our mission is to build the data platform for the age of AI, powering a new class of data-first applications and driving a data culture.
Within Azure Data, the databases team builds and maintains Microsoft's operational Database systems. We store and manage data in a structured way to enable multitude of applications across various industries. We are on a journey to enable developer friendly, mission-critical, AI enabled operational Databases across relational, non-relational and OSS offerings.​
​​Azure Database for PostgreSQL is one of the fastest‑growing open‑source database services in the cloud, powering mission‑critical workloads for customers across the globe. Our team builds the foundational control plane, orchestration systems, and operational infrastructure that ensure PostgreSQL on Azure is reliable, scalable, secure, and effortless for customers to use. We are looking for a Principal Engineer who thrives in solving complex distributed systems challenges, shaping long‑term architecture, and driving engineering excellence across a large, multi‑service platform. What makes this team unique is the breadth of responsibility: we sit at the intersection of cloud infrastructure, open‑source database internals, multi‑tenant orchestration, and mission‑critical service operations. As a Principal Engineer here, you will shape the technical direction for a platform that spans ARM/Resource Manager, compute, networking, storage, billing, telemetry, and the PostgreSQL engine itself — with direct impact on millions of databases worldwide.
We do not just value differences or different perspectives. We seek them out and invite them in so we can tap into the collective power of everyone in the company. As a result, our customers are better served.

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. 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 Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Nice To Haves

• Master'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 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.
• Strong expertise in SQL performance tuning and diagnosing query, engine, and system‑level bottlenecks across distributed cloud environments.
• Experience with PostgreSQL internals, database engines, or cloud database services.
• Deep understanding of control plane and data plane architectures in cloud environments.
• Hands‑on experience with Azure infrastructure (Compute, Networking, ARM, Storage).
• Proven track record of improving service reliability, performance, and operational efficiency.
• Experience with large‑scale rollout systems, automation frameworks, or multi‑region deployments.

Responsibilities

• Partners with appropriate stakeholders (e.g., project manager, technical lead) to determine user requirements for a set of scenarios. Leverages a variety of feedback channels to incorporate insights into future designs or solution fixes. Leads incorporation of appropriate continuous feedback loops measuring customer value, usage patterns, and other actionable metrics of value. Begins to determine additional critical metrics.
• Leads efforts and discussions for the architecture of aspects of products/solutions (e.g., design, cost). Creates proposals for architecture and design documents, and leads testing of hypotheses and proposed solutions. Shares and acts on findings from investigations, owns design decisions, and oversees the junior team members. Leads the development of design documents for designs or User Stories and determines the technology that will be leveraged and how they will interact. Leads design discussions with the team and shares findings/learnings from investigations, holding ownership for design decisions. Leads efforts to assure system architecture meets security and compliance requirements and expectations.
• Leads by example and mentors others to produce extensible and maintainable code used across products. Leads efforts to optimize, debug, refactor, and reuse code to improve performance and maintainability, effectiveness, and return on investment (ROI). Identifies best practices and coding patterns and provides deep expertise in the coding and validation strategy. Creates and applies metrics to drive the quality and stability of code, as well as appropriate coding patterns and best practices.
• Holds accountability as a Designated Responsible Individual (DRI) and mentors other engineers across products/solutions, working on call to monitor system/product/service for degradation, downtime, or interruptions.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees