Senior Software Engineer

Microsoft•Redmond, WA

2d•$119,800 - $234,700

About The Position

Microsoft Security (MSEC) is seeking a Senior Security Engineer with deep domain expertise to build and operationalize security-first systems that enable safe and scalable AI adoption. This role sits at the intersection of security engineering, AI systems, and enterprise readiness, focusing on transforming complex signals across identity, endpoints, data, applications, and infrastructure into actionable security insights, detections, and automated mitigation workflows. You will design and build end-to-end security systems that detect, prioritize, and respond to risks in AI-enabled environments—bridging traditional security controls with emerging AI-native threat models (LLM abuse, prompt injection, data exfiltration, model misuse). You will operate in a highly collaborative environment, driving execution from security signal ingestion and detection engineering to response automation and governance, helping customers achieve secure AI readiness at enterprise scale.

Requirements

Bachelor’s Degree AND 6+ years of experience in security engineering, software engineering, or distributed systems.
Strong experience building production-grade security systems (detections, pipelines, or platforms).
Deep understanding of security domains such as identity, cloud security, endpoint security, or data protection.
Strong programming skills (e.g., Python, C#, or Java) for system design, automation, and pipeline development.
Experience building and operating distributed systems and large-scale data pipelines.
Preferred 8+ years of experience in security engineering and large-scale system design.
Experience with security detection engineering, threat modeling, and incident response systems.
Familiarity with AI/ML systems and their security implications (LLMs, RAG, agentic workflows).
Expertise in cloud security platforms (Azure preferred) and enterprise-scale environments.
Experience with security telemetry platforms, SIEM systems, or data lakes.
Proven ability to operate in ambiguous, cross-org environments and deliver end-to-end systems.
Strong ability to communicate complex security and system concepts to technical and executive stakeholders.

Responsibilities

Design and build detection pipelines across identity, endpoint, data, and application signals to uncover vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and active threats.
Develop correlation engines and detection logic that combine multi-source telemetry into high-confidence security signals.
Build and operationalize end-to-end detection → validation → prioritization → remediation workflows.
Implement automated incident response and remediation playbooks leveraging rule-based systems, workflows, and AI-assisted reasoning.
Architect and build scalable security platforms and services that process high-volume enterprise telemetry.
Develop data pipelines and distributed systems for ingestion, enrichment, and real-time analysis of security signals.
Integrate security capabilities into APIs, services, and platform layers to enable reusable and extensible solutions.
Ensure systems are designed for reliability, performance, isolation, and security by design.
Build systems to discover and track vulnerabilities across cloud resources, identities, and application environments.
Develop prioritization models that incorporate exploitability, impact, and business criticality.
Enable workflows that drive end-to-end remediation closure, integrating with engineering systems and developer pipelines.
Align with frameworks such as Defender, MDC, ASPM to enable holistic risk visibility and response.
Define and implement controls for AI-specific threat vectors (prompt injection, data leakage, model abuse, adversarial inputs).
Build detection and mitigation mechanisms for LLM-based systems, RAG pipelines, and agentic workflows.
Embed security into AI system design, inference pipelines, and orchestration layers.
Contribute to responsible AI practices, governance, and secure deployment patterns.
Build rich telemetry systems to track security posture, risk signals, and system performance.
Develop analytics to measure detection effectiveness, false positives, and response outcomes.
Leverage telemetry to enable continuous improvement loops across detection and response systems.
Partner with Engineering, Product, Data Science, and Security teams to translate security problems into scalable engineering solutions.
Work across a matrixed organization to align signals, platforms, and response workflows.
Help define security readiness standards and onboarding playbooks for enterprise AI adoption.
Lead design and delivery of complex, large-scale security systems from concept to production.
Establish best practices for secure coding, system design, reliability, and governance.
Drive data-driven and evidence-based decision-making across security engineering initiatives.
Mentor engineers and elevate the organization’s security engineering maturity.