
Principal Software Engineer
Microsoft · Posted Sep 17
Software, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and hardware services
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About the role
Microsoft Specialized Clouds combines the power of Azure, edge platforms, devices and services to deliver comprehensive solutions across sovereign, disconnected, edge, enterprise and hybrid scenarios. The organization extends Azure's native capabilities to the customer edge, enabling customers to run mission-critical and infrastructure-intensive workloads with enterprise-grade resiliency, security, observability, manageability and performance. This Principal Engineering Manager role leads a team building critical Azure Local capabilities, owning technical direction, engineering execution and people leadership while partnering across Azure to deliver cohesive end-to-end customer experiences.
What you will do
- Lead, grow and develop a high-performing engineering team through technical direction, coaching, career development and a culture of engineering excellence.
- Own engineering strategy and execution for key areas of Azure Local, translating customer and business requirements into architecture, technical investments and measurable outcomes.
- Drive complex initiatives from ideation to production, including architecture, implementation, integration, validation, rollout and operational readiness.
- Provide strong technical leadership across distributed systems and cloud infrastructure, driving architecture and design decisions for scalable, reliable, secure and maintainable solutions.
- Partner with Product Management and engineering teams across Azure to make technical trade-offs, manage cross-team dependencies, resolve blockers and deliver end-to-end solutions.
- Partner with multiple stakeholders geographically distributed, contribute to design, planning, execution and influence overall outcomes with your team.
- Drive engineering and operational excellence across development, testing, automation, CI/CD, observability, security, live-site operations and service reliability.
- Develop technical leaders within the team through mentoring, delegation and ownership of increasingly complex initiatives.
- Partner with customers and field teams to understand real-world scenarios and translate feedback into engineering priorities and product improvements.
- Champion data-driven engineering and responsible adoption of AI-assisted development practices to improve engineering productivity and quality.
Skills used in this role
What the employer is looking for
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 15+ years of technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C#, .NET, Go, Java or Python.
- 12+ years of experience in commercial software development and 3+ years of experience managing engineering teams.
- Experience designing, building, shipping and operating reliable, large-scale distributed systems.
- Experience with cloud-native technologies, microservices, Kubernetes and containers.
- Experience with Azure or another major public cloud platform.
- Experience with site reliability engineering, observability and operational readiness practices.
- Understanding of networking fundamentals; data center networking experience is an added advantage.
- Knowledge of security and compliance requirements for public cloud services.
- Strong problem-solving, collaboration and stakeholder management skills, with demonstrated ability to deliver through influence.
- Ability to meet Microsoft security screening requirements is required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to, the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.
Preferred qualifications
- Experience on Azure platform, key platform services on Azure is a definite plus.
- Advanced technical degree (MS/PhD) is a plus.
Benefits and support
- Compensation and benefits are detailed in the job posting
About Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is a multinational technology company that develops, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products, services, and hardware devices. Best known for its Windows operating systems, Microsoft 365 productivity suite, and Xbox gaming consoles, the company has expanded heavily into enterprise cloud computing via Azure and advanced artificial intelligence solutions. As one of the world's most valuable public enterprises, it empowers individuals and businesses globally through innovative digital transformation.
- Industry
- Software
- Company size
- 228,000+ employees
- Founded
- April 4, 1975
- Location
- Redmond, Washington, USA
- Funding stage
- Public Company
Leadership
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Chief Financial Officer
Vice Chair and President
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