Principal Software Engineer at Microsoft

Redmond, Washington, United States -

Full Time

Start Date

Immediate

Expiry Date

15 May, 26

Salary

274800.0

Posted On

14 Feb, 26

Experience

10 year(s) or above

Remote Job

Yes

Telecommute

Yes

Sponsor Visa

Skills

System Design, Architecture, Implementation, Live-site Excellence, LLMs, AI Infrastructure, Distributed Systems, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Python, Mentoring, Observability, Performance

Industry

Software Development

Description

Overview You thrive solving ambiguous, high‑impact problems—exactly the kind that shape how customers experience Copilot. In this role, you join a team that empowers organizations to adapt Copilot to their unique data and workflows, giving you a front‑row seat to some of the most innovative engineering work happening today. You’ll collaborate with experts across AI, platform engineering, and product to build capabilities that tens of thousands of users rely on. Copilot Tuning is a new product that aims to fine-tune large language models (LLMs) on tenant data, enabling task-specific agents and solutions. We are a small, nimble team that is advancing the state of the art of models in M365 Copilot. As a Principal Software Engineer, you will design and build resilient systems that power Copilot Tuning end to end—driving architecture, implementation, and live‑site excellence. You will shape how enterprise customers configure, evaluate, and refine AI‑powered agents. This opportunity will allow you to accelerate your career growth, deepen your technical breadth across distributed systems and AI infrastructure, and strengthen your product instincts by working closely with cross‑disciplinary partners. 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. Responsibilities Partners with appropriate stakeholders to determine user requirements for one or more complex scenarios. Provides technical leadership for the identification of dependencies and the development of design documents for a product, application, service, or platform. Leads by example and mentors others to produce extensible and maintainable code used across the company. Leverages deep subject-matter expertise of cross-product features with appropriate stakeholders (e.g., project managers) to lead multiple product's project plans, release plans, and work items. Holds accountability as a Designated Responsible Individual (DRI), mentoring engineers across products/solutions, working on-call to monitor system/product/service for degradation, downtime, or interruptions. Proactively seeks new knowledge and adapts to new trends, technical solutions, and patterns that will improve the availability, reliability, efficiency, observability, and performance of products while also driving consistency in monitoring and operations at scale and shares knowledge with other engineers. Qualifications 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 Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter. Preferred Qualifications: Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 12+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR equivalent experience. Experience with LLM-based systems, agent frameworks, or having a solid desire to learn. Familiarity with Microsoft’s Copilot ecosystem. Prior work on developer platforms, extensibility models, or runtime isolation. Customer obsession and passion for shipping high quality products. #copilottuning Software Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $139,900 - $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.

Responsibilities

The Principal Software Engineer will design and build resilient, end-to-end systems for Copilot Tuning, driving architecture, implementation, and live-site excellence. This role involves shaping how enterprise customers configure, evaluate, and refine AI-powered agents using fine-tuned large language models.