Principal Software Engineer

Microsoft • Redmond, WA

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About The Position

Microsoft Security works to protect customers from digital threats and help secure technology platforms, devices, and cloud environments. The Microsoft Purview team builds cloud solutions for security, compliance, data governance, and data loss prevention, including services for Office 365 and Windows clients. Its services are built on Azure and other cloud platforms and support the secure handling of sensitive data.

The Principal Software Engineer will shape the technical direction and architecture of secure, reliable, and scalable software and services. The role leads complex engineering initiatives across teams, translates ambiguous requirements into technical strategies, and identifies systemic cost drivers. The engineer analyzes cost and usage trends and guides architectural improvements to reduce cost of goods sold while balancing security, performance, reliability, and long-term scalability. Through hands-on technical leadership and mentoring, the role strengthens engineering standards and improves customer experience and operational efficiency.

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

• Master's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 8+ years of technical engineering experience coding in languages such as C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python, or equivalent experience.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 12+ years of technical engineering experience coding in languages such as C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python, or equivalent experience.

Responsibilities

• Set cross-component technical architecture for classification-quality engineering, defining boundaries, contracts, data flows, and tradeoffs for scale, reliability, security, privacy, and diagnosability.
• Establish a quality strategy spanning precision, recall, regression detection, representative and negative cases, failure-mode analysis, and actionable quality metrics across components.
• Lead technical design reviews and decisions, resolve cross-component dependencies, document tradeoffs, and influence partner teams through evidence and clear engineering direction.
• Guide implementation and automation across services through design and code reviews, reusable patterns, and technical standards for maintainability, secure operation, and privacy-aware telemetry.
• Investigate systemic quality regressions and classification failure modes, connect evidence to architectural changes, and drive durable remediation across component owners.
• Define safe rollout, rollback, monitoring, and operational-readiness approaches for cross-component changes, and use post-deployment signals to improve the engineering system.
• Partner with product, privacy, security, and technical leaders to translate ambiguous requirements into technical strategy, communicate risks and options, and build alignment.
• Embody Microsoft's Culture and Values.

Benefits

• Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation.

What This Job Offers

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