Software Engineer II - CTJ - Poly

Microsoft•Redmond, WA

About The Position

Security and sovereignty are rapidly reshaping the expectations of our customers operating in highly regulated environments. Our team is building a new sovereign‑cloud‑first Azure product, engineered from day one to meet strict security, compliance, and operational requirements. You will help design and deliver core capabilities that integrate deeply with Microsoft cloud tooling, enabling secure, reliable, and compliant workflows across the Azure ecosystem. As a Software Engineer II, you will contribute to both the architecture and implementation of this new product. You will design services that emphasize reliability, supportability, and operational clarity, and you’ll help establish the engineering patterns that allow the team to “build what we want to operate.” You will also take a meaningful role in incident response leadership, helping diagnose issues, implement durable fixes, and continuously improve our live‑site posture. If you are passionate about building new Azure capabilities, improving reliability through smart automation, and operating cloud services with a strong sense of ownership, this team offers the opportunity to shape a high‑impact product from the ground up while growing across a broad technical surface area. 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 2+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR equivalent experience.
Security Clearance Requirements: Candidates must be able to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings:
The successful candidate 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. Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required pre-offer and post-hire for this role. Failure to maintain or obtain the appropriate U.S. Government clearance and/or customer screening requirements may result in employment action up to and including termination.
Clearance Verification: This position requires successful verification of the stated security clearance to meet federal government customer requirements. You will be asked to provide clearance verification information prior to an offer of employment.
Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.
Citizenship & Citizenship Verification: This position requires verification of U.S. citizenship due to citizenship-based legal restrictions. Specifically, this position supports United States federal, state, and/or local United States government agency customer and is subject to certain citizenship-based restrictions where required or permitted by applicable law. To meet this legal requirement, citizenship will be verified via a valid passport, or other approved documents, or verified US government Clearance

Nice To Haves

Master’s Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field AND 2+ years of software engineering experience OR Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field AND 3+ years of software engineering experience OR equivalent experience.
Proficiency in C# and experience building cloud‑ready services, tools, or platform components.
Hands‑on experience with Azure or similar‑scale cloud platforms, with strong interest in cloud‑first PaaS development and platform integration.
Experience building or operating services in sovereign or regulated cloud environments.
Familiarity with scripting and automation tools (e.g., PowerShell, Python) to streamline diagnostics and engineering workflows.
Experience supporting production or cloud services, including logging, telemetry, monitoring, alerting, and on‑call/DRI responsibilities.
Demonstrated ability to analyze service health data to identify trends and drive reliability improvements.
Problem‑solving and debugging skills across cloud services, platform components, and operational tooling.

Responsibilities

Contribute to the design and implementation of a new sovereign‑cloud‑first Azure product, integrating with existing Microsoft cloud tooling and platform services.
Participate in architectural discussions that balance reliability, simplicity, maintainability, and long‑term sustainability.
Build services, Application Programming Interface (APIs), and tools designed to be operable, diagnosable, and maintainable, with an emphasis on “build what we want to operate.”
Act as a Designated Responsible Individual (DRI) on rotation, monitoring for issues, triaging incidents, and driving mitigations within Service Level Agreement (SLA) expectations.
Lead incident response for your areas: perform deep diagnostics, identify root causes, implement durable fixes, and contribute to high‑quality post‑incident reviews.
Instrument features and services with meaningful telemetry to improve visibility, alerting, performance tracking, and early issue detection.
Use operational data and insights to guide improvements in availability, reliability, and service health.
Develop scripts, tooling, and automation to reduce manual effort, eliminate operational friction, and enable safer, faster production changes.
Help build the engineering systems, pipelines, and validation processes that support reliable release and deployment workflows in sovereign environments.
Experience with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, build/release systems, and modern engineering workflows.
Familiarity with agile development practices, with an emphasis on continuous improvement of team processes, tooling, and engineering quality.
History of developing automation and tooling to remove manual effort, improve release safety, and accelerate team velocity.
Apply secure‑by‑design principles appropriate to sovereign cloud scenarios, including least privilege, defense in depth, and compliant data handling.
Help validate and reinforce compliance expectations across new features, integrations, and operational workflows.
Understanding of secure‑by‑design engineering practices, identity and access fundamentals, and compliance considerations in cloud environments.
Knowledge of data‑handling, access control, or operational requirements relevant to sovereign or regulated cloud scenarios.
Collaborate with engineering partners across Azure to deliver integrated solutions that work seamlessly with Microsoft cloud tooling and infrastructure.
Participate in design reviews, code reviews, and technical deep dives; share learnings and help elevate team engineering standards.
Demonstrate a growth mindset, a bias for action, and a commitment to building reliable, high‑quality software.
Proven experience partnering across engineering teams or disciplines to deliver integrated solutions.
Demonstrated curiosity, willingness to learn new technologies, and commitment to improving both personal and team-level engineering practices.