Software Engineer II - CTJ- POLY

Microsoft•Redmond, WA

1d•$102,100 - $219,200

About The Position

Microsoft Defender is seeking a Software Engineer II to build and deliver cloud solutions for government environments. The role contributes to evolving cloud security products that provide protection at large scale against active cyberattacks. The engineer develops, tests, deploys, and operates product features, applying secure engineering practices and collaborating with partner teams and stakeholders throughout the software development lifecycle. The position includes designing and implementing maintainable, reliable, scalable, and secure software; using AI tools appropriately in development and testing; and contributing to architecture, test strategy, automation, deployment, and experimentation. The engineer also supports live-site operations on a rotational on-call basis, uses telemetry to monitor and investigate service behavior, and helps mitigate incidents. Work includes understanding customer requirements and ensuring product features meet security, privacy, compliance, accessibility, performance, and reliability expectations. The role requires an active U.S. Government Top Secret Clearance with SCI access based on an SSBI with Polygraph, verification of the clearance, U.S. citizenship verification, and successful completion of Microsoft’s Cloud background check upon hire or transfer and every two years thereafter. The typical U.S. base pay range is $102,100–$202,200 per year; a different range applies in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City metropolitan area: $133,800–$219,200 per year. The position will be open for at least five days, with applications accepted until filled.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and at least 2 years of technical engineering experience coding in languages such as C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python, or equivalent experience.
Must have an active U.S. Government Top Secret Clearance with access to Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI), based on a Single Scope Background Investigation (SSBI) with Polygraph.
Must be able to meet Microsoft, customer, and/or government security screening requirements before offer and after hire; failure to obtain or maintain required clearance or screening may result in employment action, up to and including termination.
Successful verification of the stated security clearance is required; clearance verification information must be provided before an employment offer.
Must pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire or transfer and every two years thereafter.
U.S. citizenship verification is required due to citizenship-based legal restrictions applicable to government customers.

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and at least 3 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 at least 5 years of technical engineering experience coding in languages such as C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python; or equivalent experience.
Experience building and operating services on Microsoft Azure and other cloud platforms.

Responsibilities

Use appropriate AI tools and practices across the software development lifecycle, reviewing AI-generated changes and taking responsibility for their content.
Create, review, and maintain product code and tests, applying coding standards, security practices, and automated source-code analysis tools.
Use debugging, tests, logs, telemetry, and other methods to verify assumptions, investigate issues, conduct incident retrospectives, and prevent recurrence.
Contribute to architecture and design work, evaluate design options, develop design documents, and consider performance, scalability, resiliency, cost, security, and compliance requirements.
Develop test strategies and plans, perform security testing, add or repair tests, improve test reliability and speed, and use AI tools for test automation.
Identify system dependencies and collaborate with other teams on integration, validation, and shared goals.
Contribute to automation for production and deployment, validate code in non-production environments, and apply secure design and scaling practices.
Identify and reuse appropriate open-source or internal code and contribute to improving engineering tools and practices.
Apply security best practices, define and uphold security invariants, contribute to deployment gates and scanners, support security monitoring, and work with security partners on threat models and incident processes.
Follow security, privacy, safety, accessibility, and compliance processes, and maintain awareness of applicable regulations.
Work with partner teams to establish end-to-end testing, live-site coverage, scalability, performance, and escalation pathways before launch.
Keep skills current and share engineering knowledge and design principles with colleagues.
Review work items, execute project and release plans, estimate and break down work, raise schedule risks, and account for security, disaster recovery, efficient operations, and rollback planning.
Support safe feature deployments, monitor dependencies and deployed versions, identify when rollback is needed, and contribute to production-like testing infrastructure.
Run experiments using feature flags or flighting and collaborate with partners on success and guard-rail metrics.
Participate in rotational on-call operations, respond to service degradation or incidents within SLA timeframes, mitigate issues, and escalate to appropriate owners.
Improve troubleshooting guides, documentation, tests, telemetry, and live-site support practices.
Contribute to logging and instrumentation, analyze system metrics, improve monitoring and dashboards, and consider privacy impacts of telemetry changes.
Serve as a designated responsible individual on-call to monitor services, alert stakeholders, and obtain approval to restore service when needed.
Work with internal stakeholders to understand customer requirements and incorporate customer insights and security and privacy needs into designs and fixes.