Principal Software Engineer

Microsoft•Redmond, WA

34d

About The Position

Microsoft Teams is the hub for modern collaboration—bringing together everything teams need to succeed, all within the Office 365 ecosystem. It serves as the canvas that unifies your content, tools, people, and conversations in one seamless experience. As one of Microsoft’s most dynamic and impactful products, Teams is redefining the future of teamwork—and we’re just getting started. Join us on this journey as we push the boundaries of what’s possible with Generative AI, Large Language Models (LLMs), and a world-class AI stack powering Teams Copilot and other cutting-edge AI experiences. You’ll be part of a team at the forefront of AI innovation, leveraging the latest in deep learning, natural language processing, and conversational AI to shape the future of work. Within the Messaging Services team, we’re evolving our microservices architecture to deliver new messaging capabilities while ensuring high performance, scalability, and cost efficiency. We’re looking for a passionate and skilled Principal Software Engineer to help us build robust, scalable backend services that power critical messaging experiences. This is a unique opportunity to sharpen your system design skills and work with a modern tech stack including .NET Core, TypeScript, Redis, and Azure Cosmos DB—all while collaborating across teams and organizations. We take pride in how we build. Our team runs lean, stays customer-obsessed, and makes decisions grounded in data. We embrace a live-site-first, metrics-driven culture that minimizes tech debt and maximizes impact. In this role, you’ll take end-to-end ownership, drive meaningful outcomes, and directly influence customer satisfaction and business growth. 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.
4+ years of experience working on large-scale distributed systems, client-server architectures, and distributed database systems.
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.
Experience working with Service Fabric or Kubernetes
Experience working with M365 components like AAD, Exchange, Substrate, SharePoint
Drive to improve performance, availability and supportability of services
Drive to increase efficiencies through automation

Responsibilities

Design, develop, and operate high-scale services that power the core messaging infrastructure of Microsoft Teams
Apply cutting-edge techniques in deep learning, natural language processing, and conversational AI to enhance the intelligence and user experience of Microsoft Teams.
Prototype, experiment, and evaluate new ideas to deliver next-generation AI-powered messaging features that redefine how teams communicate.
Work closely with AI teams across Microsoft to share best practices, align on strategy, and leverage shared infrastructure and research.
Dive deep into Azure technologies and distributed database systems. Collaborate with internal and external partners to design features that drive user growth and engagement.
Develop features that delight customers while upholding the highest standards of availability, reliability, performance, and scalability—never compromising on engineering fundamentals.
Influence and define new designs, architectures, standards, and reusable service libraries that empower teams across Microsoft to build at scale.

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