Software Engineer II - Perception Red Agent Team

Microsoft • Redmond, WA

19h • $102,100 - $219,200

About The Position

Microsoft Security is developing Perception, an advanced AI platform that helps security and IT teams work at the speed and scale of AI while following Microsoft’s Responsible AI principles. The Red Agents team builds autonomous, AI-powered offensive security agents that continuously emulate real-world adversaries.

The Software Engineer II will lead the design and delivery of secure, reliable, and safe agentic red teaming capabilities at enterprise scale. The role drives technical solutions for multi-agent systems combining Generative AI, reasoning, memory, and planning with security expertise, subject to strict safety, authorization, and scope guardrails. The engineer partners with Product, Applied Science, Responsible AI, and internal red teams to turn adversary tradecraft and industry frameworks into scalable, customer-ready capabilities. The role also contributes to engineering excellence across architecture, service health, compliance, and security hygiene, mentors engineers, and helps the team deliver trustworthy AI-driven security experiences.

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#, Rust, 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

• Knowledge of using advanced tooling or AI to improve work efficiency.
• Software development experience producing maintainable and well-tested code.
• Understanding of algorithms, data structures, and systems architecture factors affecting code quality, performance, and customer experience.
• Proficiency with debugging, testing, and telemetry tools.
• Experience building Generative AI or agentic systems, including LLM orchestration, retrieval, tool use, evaluation, and safety guardrails.
• Background in offensive security, red teaming, penetration testing, or adversary emulation, including familiarity with frameworks such as MITRE ATT&CK.
• Understanding of identity and authorization concepts such as least privilege, role-based access control (RBAC), delegated access, and multi-tenant isolation, especially for autonomous or AI-driven systems.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with and guide internal and external stakeholders to determine and confirm customer and user requirements.
• Lead discussions and own product or solution architecture; test design hypotheses and develop design specifications.
• Create testing strategies to ensure quality and prevent regressions.
• Identify dependencies and incorporate them into product or solution design documents.
• Produce extensible, maintainable, well-tested, secure, and performant code that adheres to design specifications.
• Use debugging tools, tests, logs, telemetry, and other methods to verify assumptions during development and prevent production issues.
• Use appropriate tooling, including artificial intelligence, to improve efficiency and quality of work.
• Review product and test code to ensure it meets team standards, has appropriate test coverage, and suits the product or solution.
• Design, implement, test, roll out, and operate software services.
• Work collaboratively in an agile environment with local and remote partners and team members.
• Ship code to thousands of machines serving millions of users worldwide.
• Mentor engineers and help the team execute through ambiguity.

Benefits

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

What This Job Offers

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