Principal Software Engineer - (Vector Search/Information Retrieval)
About The Position
Microsoft’s Azure Data engineering team builds data platform products spanning databases, data integration, analytics, messaging, and business intelligence. The Databases organization delivers scalable, AI-ready operational databases across cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments. This Principal Software Engineer will work closely with research and engineering teams to develop algorithms, models, and high-performance libraries for AI-based information retrieval in Azure Data products. The role focuses on building vector search capabilities across multiple data products, based on the DiskANN project, and developing embedding models and other AI technologies for semantic retrieval. The engineer will translate research innovations into products.
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.
- 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
- 2+ years of experience in two or more of the following: Rust, vector search or information retrieval, algorithm development, database internals, performance engineering, or numerical methods.
- Experience developing and maintaining libraries.
- Ability to maintain high code quality while working with many collaborators.
Responsibilities
- Work independently and collaboratively with a fast-moving research team.
- Lead by example across teams and mentor others in producing extensible, maintainable, well-tested, secure, and performant code that follows design specifications.
- Lead continuous improvement of code performance, testability, maintainability, effectiveness, and cost, accounting for relevant trade-offs.
- Own and lead architecture discussions and efforts for aspects of complex products and solutions, including design and cost.
- Test and explore design options across complex product and solution scenarios, explain their strengths and weaknesses, recommend the best option, and create architecture and design proposals.
- Lead testing of hypotheses and proposed complex solutions, share and act on findings, own design decisions, and oversee less experienced team members.
- Create and mentor others in clear test strategies that ensure solution quality and prevent regressions.
- Add tests to cover gaps, fix or remove broken tests, and improve test-suite speed, reliability, and defect localization.
- Build testable code and consider testability during solution design.
- Collaborate with partner teams to ensure products work well with partner components, and establish end-to-end testing, live-site coverage, scalability, performance, and DRI escalation pathways before launch.
- Partner with stakeholders, such as technical program managers, to drive project plans, release plans, and work items across multiple groups.
- Break down long-term project vision into milestones as part of an overall roadmap.
- Embody Microsoft’s culture and values.
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
