OverviewMicrosoft has an exciting opportunity for a Principal Software Engineer in the Microsoft Specialized Clouds Teams Phone team, focused on building, deploying, and operating Teams Phone services within Air Gapped and Sovereign Cloud environments.
Teams Phone is a foundational service within Teams, enabling customers to associate traditional phone service into the Teams product and collaborate with more devices and more coworkers. In highly regulated and mission-critical environments, these capabilities must be delivered with strict requirements for security, compliance, reliability, and operational excellence.
As a Principal Software Engineer, you will lead the design, development, and evolution of Teams Phone services that power critical communication experiences across sovereign, air-gapped, and compliance-sensitive environments. You will partner with engineering teams across Microsoft to deliver scalable, secure, and resilient distributed systems while enabling feature parity with Public Cloud offerings.
In this role, you will drive technical strategy, influence architecture decisions, and lead complex, multi-year engineering initiatives spanning multiple teams and organizations. You will own the full software development lifecycle, from system design and implementation to deployment, performance optimization, and continuous improvement. As a senior technical leader, you will champion engineering excellence, mentor others, and help shape a culture of innovation, quality, automation, and operational rigor.
Responsibilities• Lead engineering excellence through mentorship, coding best practices, quality standards, and proactive risk management.
• Lead architecture and design strategy for complex systems, driving scalable, resilient, secure, and cost-efficient solutions through technical leadership, innovation, and data-driven decision making.
• Drive end-to-end delivery planning and execution for complex services, ensuring security, compliance, resiliency, scalability, and operational readiness throughout the product lifecycle.
• Investigate pre-production and production issues, implement, and deploy fixes.
• Participate in an on-call rotation (typically 24/7 for one week every 6-8 weeks) within a secure facility.
QualificationsRequired/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.
Other Requirements: Security Clearance Requirements: Candidates must be able 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:
- The successful candidate must have an active U.S. Government Top Secret Clearance with access to Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) based on a Single Scope Background Investigation (SSBI) with Polygraph. Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. Failure to maintain or obtain the appropriate U.S. Government clearance and/or customer screening requirements may result in employment action up to and including termination.
- Clearance Verification: This position requires successful verification of the stated security clearance to meet federal government customer requirements. You will be asked to provide clearance verification information prior to an offer of employment.
- Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.
- Citizenship & Citizenship Verification: This position requires verification of U.S. citizenship due to citizenship-based legal restrictions. Specifically, this position supports United States federal, state, and/or local United States government agency customer and is subject to certain citizenship-based restrictions where required or permitted by applicable law. To meet this legal requirement, citizenship will be verified via a valid passport, or other approved documents, or verified US government Clearance
Preferred/Additional 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 10+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR equivalent experience.
This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.
