Principal Software Engineer

Microsoft brings together passionate innovators to collaborate, imagine what is possible, and build solutions in a cloud- and AI-enabled world. 

The Global Skilling Product Team (GSPT) develops innovative products and experiences that help customers, partners, sellers, and future generations skill, upskill, and reskill. Our goal is to reach more than 100 million learners through accessible, high-quality learning experiences across Microsoft Learn and other digital platforms. 

As a Principal Software Engineer, you will be a hands-on technical authority responsible for designing and delivering scalable learning and skilling solutions. You will modernize content operations, use AI-assisted capabilities to improve how content is created and distributed, and help make learning available across Microsoft Learn, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, and other channels. You will translate business needs, workflow constraints, and success criteria into secure, reliable solutions and measurable outcomes. Working across product, operations, partner, and engineering teams, you will guide solutions from discovery through production adoption using the right combination of Copilot, AI agents, Power Platform, Azure services, and custom software. This individual-contributor role requires influence across organizational boundaries without direct people-management responsibility.

If you thrive in collaborative, agile environments and enjoy solving complex real-world problems, we would like to hear from you.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, and we’re dedicated to this mission across every aspect of our company. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their highly qualified contributions each day. Join us and help shape the future of the world.

Provide principal-level technical leadership while remaining directly accountable for architecture, code, delivery, and engineering outcomes. 

The Principal Software Engineer is responsible for the following:

• Design architectures that connect workflows, data, and enterprise services, including interfaces, data contracts, dependencies, access boundaries, failure handling, and upstream and downstream impacts. 

• Lead the full software lifecycle for skilling platform features: requirements, architecture, application and database design, implementation, testing, deployment, and production support. 

• Write, review, debug, and ship production-quality software, leading critical components and resolving complex issues while balancing delivery speed, performance, extensibility, and maintainability. 

• Select and apply Copilot, AI agents, Power Platform, Azure services, reusable platforms, and custom software based on business value, feasibility, risk, security, maintainability, and total cost of ownership. 

• Partner with product, business, and operations stakeholders to understand end-to-end scenarios, handoffs, exceptions, bottlenecks, constraints, and measurable success criteria. 

• Co-engineer with partner teams and engineering counterparts to align designs, interfaces, dependencies, milestones, acceptance criteria, and support handoffs; resolve disagreements through evidence and influence. 

• Build in security, least-privilege access, privacy, and Responsible AI. Evaluate AI quality and safety, control data access, and provide auditability and human oversight. 

• Establish automated testing, code reviews, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, documentation, and deployment safeguards for repeatable and supportable delivery. 

• Engineer reliable services with telemetry, actionable alerts, diagnostics, recovery procedures, root-cause analysis, and continuous improvements to service health and operational readiness. 

• Create reusable components, integration patterns, and guidance that reduce duplication, with clear ownership, lifecycle maintenance, and knowledge-transfer plans. 

Mentorship, Technical Community, and Talent Scaling 

• Mentor engineers through design reviews, pairing, and constructive feedback, strengthening architectural judgment, engineering discipline, and Responsible AI practices. 

• Scale impact through reusable guidance, documentation, and learning sessions that build alignment and capability across technical communities.

Other

• Embody our culture and values

Minimum 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.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 10+ years of technical engineering experience, or a bachelor’s degree and 12+ years of experience,
• OR equivalent experience. 
• Proficiency with C#/.NET and React/TypeScript, or comparable languages and frameworks, and experience delivering cloud applications on Azure or equivalent platforms. 
• Experience with enterprise-scale cloud or hybrid infrastructure, architecture, migrations, and technologies such as App Service, AKS, Azure Container Apps, Functions, API Management, Logic Apps, Azure DevOps, Azure SQL, Cosmos DB, and Azure Data Factory. 
• Experience designing REST APIs and enterprise integrations with clear data contracts, identity and access controls, resilient dependency handling, and maintainable architecture. 
• Experience influencing technical strategy across teams and co-engineering with partners, including design alignment, dependency management, acceptance, and operational handoffs. 
• Experience making build, buy, and reuse decisions based on business needs, security, maintainability, and total cost of ownership. 
• Experience with CI/CD, automated test gates, infrastructure as code, observability, production troubleshooting, cloud-cost optimization, and operational efficiency. 
• Experience delivering AI/ML or generative AI solutions, including Copilot extensions, AI agents, retrieval-augmented generation, enterprise search, vector retrieval, LLM orchestration, or agentic workflows, with evaluation, monitoring, safety, and quality controls. 

• Proficient knowledge of data structures, algorithms, software-design principles, and production debugging.

• Ability to mentor engineers, communicate trade-offs to technical and nontechnical stakeholders, and build alignment in ambiguous, cross-organizational environments. 
• Experience leading teams through direct management or as a squad lead is a plus.

Software Engineering IC5 - 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.