Principal Engineering Manager

Security represents the most critical priorities for our customers in a world awash in digital threats, regulatory scrutiny, and estate complexity. Microsoft Security aspires to make the world a safer place for all. We want to reshape security and empower every user, customer, and developer with a security cloud that protects them with end to end, simplified solutions. The Microsoft Security organization accelerates Microsoft’s mission and bold ambitions to ensure that our company and industry is securing digital technology platforms, devices, and clouds in our customers’ heterogeneous environments, as well as ensuring the security of our own internal estate. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world.
Microsoft Entra secures identities for billions of users - and, increasingly, for the AI agents acting on their behalf. Within Identity Security, the Conditional Access team owns the policy engine that decides, in real time on every sign-in, who gets access to what and under which conditions. It is the most consequential enforcement point in the Microsoft identity stack. We are now building the agentic layer on top of it: the Conditional Access Optimization Agent, an AI system that reasons over an organization's policies, surfaces gaps and risky configurations, and recommends and safely applies the changes that harden posture without breaking users. We are hiring a Principal Engineering Manager to set the technical direction for securing AI at Microsoft - both securing the agents we ship and using agents to secure our customers. It is a problem space that spans the Conditional Access policy engine, Identity Protection risk signals, and the emerging agent-identity platform, and the person in this role defines how those pieces fit together.
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.

We are looking for a seasoned engineering leader who builds high-performing teams from the ground up, sets technical direction in genuine ambiguity, and ships production AI systems that enterprises trust. This is a rare chance to stand up the team defining how AI both secures Microsoft's customers.

Responsibilities include:

• Build and grow the team. Hire, develop, and retain a high-caliber engineering team on a net-new charter, and turn senior engineers into technical leaders and future managers
• Set the technical and product direction and be accountable for delivering an AI system that safely reasons over - and changes - customer identity policy at scale.
• Set the bar for safe agentic engineering. Establish how the team designs, tests, and ships AI that must be correct, explainable, and reversible -hardening posture without breaking users.
• Drive the "securing AI" strategy across boundaries. Define how the Conditional Access engine, Identity Protection risk signals, and the agent-identity platform fit together, and align the teams that own them.
• Build a team culture where reliability, security, and operational excellence are first-class. 
• Represent the work to leadership and customers. Shape the roadmap with partners and executives across Microsoft Security, and bring enterprise feedback directly back into the plan.
  

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 6+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR equivalent experience. 
  

Other Requirements:

Ability 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: Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft background and Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.
#MSFTSecurity, #MSFTSecurity, #AI #ConditionalAccess #GenAI #ZeroTrust

Software Engineering M5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $274,800 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $188,000 - $304,200 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.