Software Engineer II

Microsoft • Redmond, WA

3d • $102,100 - $219,200

About The Position

Microsoft is hiring a Software Engineer II to build and operate platform features that make software development simpler and help engineering teams work more effectively. The role focuses on distributed systems, scalability, performance, observability, reliability, security, developer experience, and applying AI to engineering problems. The engineer will design, implement, test, deploy, and operate production features; own well-defined parts of the platform; and work with senior engineers and partner teams to take ideas from prototype to production. The role also includes exploring intelligent automation and contributing to the engineer's technical growth and scope.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 2 or more years of technical engineering experience coding in languages such as C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python, or equivalent experience.
• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer, and/or government security screening requirements, including passing the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire or transfer and every two years thereafter.

Nice To Haves

• Master's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 3 or more years of technical engineering experience coding in languages such as C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python; or a bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 5 or more years of such experience; or equivalent experience.
• Experience building and operating production services or distributed systems.
• Experience building or contributing to internal platforms, shared services, or developer tools used by other teams.
• Hands-on experience integrating large language models or agents into applications or engineering workflows.
• Familiarity with designing APIs or workflows usable by both human developers and AI agents.
• Experience in a platform area such as service frameworks, data infrastructure, observability, CI/CD, experimentation, configuration management, or cloud infrastructure.
• Experience using telemetry, profiling, or production debugging to identify and fix performance or reliability issues.
• Experience contributing to migrations or modernizing existing systems.
• Experience turning a prototype or proof of concept into a production feature.
• Interest in applying AI to engineering work, ability to use AI tools effectively, and critical judgment about their correctness, security, and reliability.
• Record of delivering features from design through production while working effectively within a team.
• Ability to break down loosely defined problems into clear, practical technical tasks.
• Good communication and collaboration skills, including explaining technical choices and being open to feedback.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, test, and ship core platform components for engineering teams, with guidance from senior engineers on larger architectural decisions.
• Help build and evaluate AI-assisted and agent-based features for troubleshooting, testing, migrations, and operational analysis.
• Work with partner teams to understand their challenges, gather feedback, and turn common problems into self-service features.
• Contribute to automated validation, progressive rollout, observability, and recovery tools that enable safer delivery.
• Deliver well-scoped features from design through implementation, deployment, and ongoing operation, including on-call support and production issue resolution.
• Collaborate with team and partner engineers to clarify requirements, discuss technical tradeoffs, and raise risks early.
• Write clean, well-tested code; participate in code and design reviews; share knowledge; and support continuous improvement.

Benefits

• Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation; additional benefits and pay information is available through the linked Microsoft careers page.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level