Principal Software Engineering Manager

Microsoft • Redmond, WA

4d

About The Position

The Cloud & AI organization accelerates Microsoft’s mission and bold ambitions to ensure that our company and industry is securing digital technology platforms, devices, and clouds in our customers’ heterogeneous environments, as well as ensuring the security of our own internal estate. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world. Microsoft is one of the largest enterprise service companies in the world.
Security represents one of the most critical priorities for our customers in a world of digital threats, regulatory scrutiny, and estate complexity. Our Team builds and operates hardware-backed key management services that enable customers and Microsoft teams to protect their most valuable assets using some of Azure’s most secure hardware infrastructure. Our portfolio spans multiple offerings—including Managed HSM, Cloud HSM, Dedicated HSM, and Payments HSM—delivering strong security boundaries, high availability, and rigorous operational guarantees for cryptographic key protection scenarios at cloud scale. We are seeking a Principal Software Engineering Manager to lead and run a hardware backed key management service end-to-end: setting technical direction, driving operational excellence and reliability, and partnering broadly to meet stringent security and compliance requirements. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day; in doing so, we create innovations that can have a meaningful impact on a global scale.

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.
• Candidates must be able to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role.
• 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.
• 4+ years people management experience.
• Experience leading engineering teams delivering and operating large-scale services in production.
• Demonstrated experience in engineering fundamentals: operational excellence, incident management, and driving measurable reliability improvements.
• Experience leading cross-team technical programs with multiple stakeholders.
• Experience with security engineering and/or cryptographic systems (key management, encryption, or high-assurance services).
• Familiarity with building standardized mechanisms and best practices for key protection across diverse scenarios and environments.
• Experience working in systems with strong compliance expectations and operational controls.

Responsibilities

• Lead an engineering team that builds and operates hardware-backed key management services, including service reliability, performance, and operational readiness
• Own production outcomes end-to-end: service health, incident response, root-cause learning, and risk reduction through engineering improvements and automation.
• Drive a roadmap that advances security, compliance, and engineering fundamentals (deployment safety, validation, observability, and resiliency) for hardware-backed cryptographic services.
• Partner across engineering and stakeholder teams to deliver secure key protection outcomes for both internal and customer scenarios, aligning to evolving requirements and standards.
• Hire, coach, and develop senior engineers; create clarity, accountability, and an inclusive team culture that scales execution

What This Job Offers

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