Principal Software Engineering Manager

Microsoft•Redmond, WA

About The Position

Are you passionate about AI, data, and transformative user experiences? Do you bring energy, curiosity, and a strong sense of ownership to your work? The Finance Data & Experiences (FD&E) organization is on a mission to redefine how Microsoft measures, monitors, and optimizes its global business — and we’re looking for top talent to join us. This is a unique opportunity to lead with bold ideas, apply cutting-edge technology, and work across Finance, Sales, Marketing, Business Operations, and Product Engineering to deliver high-impact business solutions. The right candidate will thrive in fast-paced, cross-functional environments, bring fresh thinking to complex problems, and be eager to learn to take ownership of end-to-end processes and outcomes. Join us and be part of a team that’s pushing the boundaries of innovation, taking risks, and implementing AI to drive business excellence. At FD&E, we foster a culture of customer centricity, innovation, agility, and transparency — and we’re building a team that’s ready to help Microsoft chart its next chapter in AI-driven business excellence. As a Principal Software Engineering Manager at Microsoft, you’ll be part of a team of world-class engineers leveraging cutting-edge Microsoft Cloud and AI technologies to deliver modern, scalable, and intelligent systems that drive the Microsoft business forward. 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.

Nice To Haves

Proven experience managing software engineering teams, including hiring, performance management, and career development.
Track record of delivering software projects end-to-end: scoping, planning, shipping, and iterating along with solid communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to operate effectively across engineering, product, and leadership stakeholders while being comfortable leading in ambiguous, fast-moving problem spaces where best practices are still being established.
Familiarity with agentic AI development patterns - multi-step reasoning, tool/function calling, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and human-in-the-loop workflows.
A solid software engineering background - you don't need to be writing production code daily, but you should be able to engage deeply with technical decisions, review designs, and earn credibility with high-level engineers.
Ability to evaluate and form informed opinions on emerging AI developer tools, and translate those insights into team strategy and best practices.
Background in developer tooling, build systems, CI/CD pipelines, or engineering systems at scale.
Hands-on experience (as an IC or manager) building systems that leverage Agent SDKs, large language models (LLMs), prompt engineering, or AI orchestration frameworks.
Prior experience using agentic plugins, agents, skills, hooks, etc.

Responsibilities

Lead a team focused on improving efficiency and fundamentals for Finance engineering services, with a focus on scalability, reliability, and efficiency
Lead, grow, and retain a team of talented software engineers working on AI-powered developer productivity tooling.
Partner with TPM, technical leads, and principal engineers to set team direction, prioritize work, and ensure alignment with broader CPI and Microsoft goals.
Drive clarity on team goals, project milestones, and success metrics - translating strategy into executable plans.
Foster a culture of experimentation and resilience, where the team feels empowered to try novel AI approaches, learn from failures, and iterate quickly.
Own the career development of your engineers - providing regular coaching, feedback, and growth opportunities.
Champion the use of AI in your team's daily workflows and stay current on the evolving landscape of AI developer tools and agentic systems.
Build and maintain strong cross-team partnerships with other groups at Microsoft working on AI, developer tooling, and engineering systems.
Recruit and hire exceptional engineering talent to grow the team.
Contribute positively to a culture where everyone can bring their full and authentic self and where we do our best work as a result.
Provide strategic direction and apply deep technical knowledge to drive measurable business impact.
Guide technical design, dependency management, and documentation across services and platforms.
Drive code optimization, refactoring, and reuse to improve system performance, maintainability, and ROI.
Act as Designated Responsible Individual (DRI) and lead on-call operations, ensuring system health and rapid incident response across product lines.
Own product scalability and performance, applying engineering best practices and holding accountability for quality and customer satisfaction