Principal Software Engineer
About The Position
The Microsoft 365 Copilot team is hiring a Principal Software Engineer to shape long-running agentic capabilities and multi-model experiences, including Critique and Council. The role involves building systems that allow agents to perform complex, multi-step tasks and models to review one another’s outputs, combining perspectives to help people reach well-grounded conclusions. This is a hands-on engineering position focused on taking ideas from architecture to production. The engineer will build scalable, reliable backend services, work with frontier models, and collaborate with teams across Microsoft, including Microsoft Research, Azure, and MAI. The role owns implementation, evaluations, shipping, and production reliability, pairing rapid iteration with rigorous engineering to create dependable customer experiences. The successful candidate will bring technical judgment, a data-driven mindset, and a commitment to engineering excellence in a fast-paced, high-visibility environment. They will also contribute to Microsoft’s culture of inclusion, collaboration, accountability, and continuous learning.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related technical field and at least 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
- Master’s degree in computer science or a related technical field and at least 6 years of technical engineering experience, or a bachelor’s degree in computer science and at least 8 years of technical engineering experience, with coding in languages such as C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python, or equivalent experience.
- Experience designing, building, shipping, and operating large-scale distributed systems, cloud services, or complex production platforms.
- Experience building production AI systems using large language models, retrieval-augmented generation, agent orchestration, tool integration, or model gateways.
- Experience with AI evaluation and prompt management for production applications.
- Ability to lead complex technical initiatives, influence architectural decisions, drive engineering standards, and align teams across organizational boundaries through clear written and verbal communication.
- Knowledge of Responsible AI and AI safety practices, including privacy, security, compliance, and data-governance requirements for enterprise AI systems.
- Experience with modern AI and agentic engineering practices, including workflow automation and AI-assisted development.
Responsibilities
- Define technical strategy and architecture for long-running agentic capabilities and multi-model experiences in Microsoft 365 Copilot, translating direction into executable plans and measurable outcomes.
- Build and own scalable distributed backend services powering experiences such as Critique and Council, from design and implementation through shipping and production operation.
- Define evaluation methodologies, offline benchmarks, and online experimentation frameworks to measure model and product performance and guide data-driven iteration and release decisions.
- Turn emerging AI capabilities into customer experiences by partnering across disciplines, clarifying requirements, navigating ambiguity, and making technical tradeoffs.
- Lead complex initiatives across teams and organizations by aligning stakeholders, defining interfaces, resolving dependencies, and balancing priorities.
- Mentor engineers and promote engineering best practices through architecture and code reviews, reusable patterns, and maintainable software.
- Champion responsible AI-assisted and agentic engineering to improve development agility, quality, learning, and speed.
- Foster inclusion, constructive collaboration, shared accountability, and continuous learning.
Benefits
- Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation; additional benefits and pay information is available through Microsoft Careers.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Principal
