# Principal Software Engineer

**Company**: Microsoft
**Location**: Redmond, Washington
**Experience**: senior
**Job type**: full-time
**Salary**: USD $142,800.00 – $274,800.00 per year
**Category**: Engineering
**Industry**: Technology
**Ticker**: MSFT
**Wikidata**: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2283

**Apply**: https://microsoft.ai/job/principal-software-engineer-79/?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply
**Canonical**: https://yubhub.co/jobs/job_5990efa7-ab1

## Description

We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to join our Microsoft AI – Copilot Discover – Knowledge Agent backend platform team. The team works on projects related to agentic vertical content generation pipelines, AI model serving pipeline, data ingestion, caching, and serving.

The platform supports backend services for various verticals, including weather, finance, and sports, delivering content across Microsoft products like Copilot, Edge, MSN, and Windows, reaching over 1 billion customers globally.

The ideal candidate should have a strong background in backend engineering and experience building highly distributed, high-volume, and reliable service platforms in the cloud. Proficiency with cloud storage, distributed task orchestration, and large-scale data processing is essential, particularly with Azure or equivalent technologies on AWS and GCP.

**Responsibilities:**

- Design, develop, test, and deploy data ingestion, pre/post processing, caching, and serving pipelines.

- Architect and implement scalable backend services with solid reliability and performance guarantees.

- Deploy algorithms and ML/DL models using containers and schedulers.

- Collaborate with scientists, engineers, and product managers to translate business requirements into technical solutions.

- Provide technical leadership and mentorship to peers.

- Ensure code quality, performance, reliability, and scalability of platform components.

- Troubleshoot and resolve issues in production and development environments.

- Participate in DRI on-call duties.

**Qualifications:**

- Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 6+ years of technical engineering experience with coding in languages like C#, .NET, or equivalents.

- 5+ years of direct experience delivering, scaling, and owning highly successful and innovative multi-tiered distributed services.

- 5+ years of experience improving service availability and robustness.

- 5+ years of hands-on experience with cloud storage, distributed task orchestration, and large-scale data processing systems on major cloud platforms.

**Preferred Qualifications:**

- Master’s Degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 8+ years of technical engineering experience.

- Experience working through full product cycles from initial design to final delivery.

- Hands-on experience with deep learning model deployment and performance tuning.

- Familiarity with DevOps practices, CI/CD, and infrastructure-as-code tools.

- Knowledge of authentication and authorization mechanisms.

- Solid communication and leadership skills with a track record of cross-team collaboration.

The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800.00 – $274,800.00 per year. For specific locations like the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, the range is USD $188,000.00 – $304,200.00 per year.

## Skills

### Required
- C#
- .NET
- Java
- Go
- Node.js
- cloud storage
- distributed task orchestration
- large-scale data processing
- Azure
- AWS
- GCP

### Nice to have
- Master’s Degree in Computer Science
- deep learning model deployment
- DevOps practices
- CI/CD
- infrastructure-as-code tools
- authentication and authorization mechanisms

---

Source: [Apply at microsoft.ai](https://microsoft.ai/job/principal-software-engineer-79/?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply)
