Microsoft

Principal Software Engineer

Microsoft • $188K — $304K *
New York, NY 10025In-Person
Information Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Today
Be an Early Applicant
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field and 6+ years technical engineering experience
  • Depth in design and coding in C#, Java, C++, Rust, or similar
  • Solid foundation in distributed systems fundamentals
  • Demonstrated performance engineering experience
  • Excellent cross-group influence and communication skills.

Responsibilities

  • Identify and resolve unsettled project requirements and ownership issues.
  • Rapidly build a working model of a new codebase and turn requests into scoped projects.
  • Own technical outcomes for high-visibility projects from framing to deployment.
  • Develop collaborative relationships with relevant partner teams and negotiate project dependencies.
  • Represent the technical stance effectively to both executives and technical teams.
  • Exercise sound judgment in prioritizing what to build and when to pivot on ongoing projects.
  • Resolve latency and scaling challenges in distributed services and enhance system resilience.

Benefits

  • Open to ongoing applications until filled.
  • Opportunity to work on high-visibility strategic projects.
  • Chance to mentor and grow the engineering community.
Full Job Description
Overview

We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer to join the Special Projects and Resources Team (SPARTANs) in M365 Core - Substrate . SPARTANs tackle strategic projects and hard problems across M365 Core that remove agility and modernization barriers for engineers across Substrate.

Responsibilities

  • Take on problems where the requirements, ownership, and sometimes the root cause are all unsettled.
  • You build a working model of an unfamiliar codebase quickly, form a defensible hypothesis, and convert open-ended asks into scoped projects with clear success criteria.
  • Own the technical outcome of high-visibility projects from problem framing through deployment and measured impact. You set the bar for clean, testable, observable code, and you leave reusable patterns, documentation, and playbooks behind, so the gain does not decay after we move on.
  • Build the coalitions the work depends on.
  • You align partner teams who do not report to you, negotiate dependencies and sequencing, and land changes across repositories and service boundaries you do not own.
  • You represent the technical position credibly to executives and to the engineers who will live with the design.
  • Exercise strong judgement. Decide what to build, what to defer, and what to stop.
  • You weigh reliability, cost, compliance, and time-to-impact under incomplete information, make the call, state the tradeoff explicitly, and revisit it when the evidence changes.
  • Diagnose and fix latency, scale, and cost problems in always-on distributed services; improve resilience, observability, and incident readiness; and serve as a Designated Responsible Individual across products where the engagement calls for it.
  • Grow the engineering community.
  • Mentor senior and principal engineers, review designs across the organization, and develop in others the techniques you use to ramp fast and reason well.
  • You model a growth mindset that treats mistakes as a source of more reliable engineering.

What you will bring
  • A track record of technical leadership on complex distributed systems, delivered through influence rather than authority.
  • Depth in design and coding in C#, Java, C++, Rust, or a comparable language, with a tested approach for gaining expertise and confidence in unfamiliar codebases.
  • Solid distributed systems fundamentals: high-scale, low-latency, always-on services that are inexpensive to operate.
  • Demonstrated performance engineering experience, including diagnosing and fixing performance and cost problems in production.
  • Excellent cross-group influence and crisp written and verbal communication, including the ability to tell the story of impact to executive audiences with evidence.


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.
  • Solid coding, design, and problem-solving skills, with proven ownership of architecture for a significant service or platform component.
  • Experience building reliable and resilient services, and ramping quickly on new technologies.
  • Experience with modernization at scale (framework, language, or platform migrations), developer productivity, or compliance-constrained engineering.


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.

About Microsoft

Microsoft is an American multinational corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services. Microsoft’s devices and consumer (D&C) licensing segment licenses the Windows operating system and related software, Microsoft Office for consumers, and the Windows Phone operating system. The company’s computing and gaming hardware segment provides Xbox gaming and entertainment consoles and accessories, second-party and third-party video games, and Xbox Live subscriptions; surface devices and accessories; and Microsoft PC accessories. Its phone hardware segment offers Lumia smartphones and other non-Lumia phones. Its D&C segment provides Windows Store, Xbox Live transactions, and Windows phone store; search advertising; display advertising; Office 365 Home and Office 365 Personal; first-party video games; and other consumer products and services as well as operating retail stores. Microsoft’s commercial licensing segments license server products, including Windows Server, Microsoft SQL Server, Visual Studio, System Center, and related Client Access Licenses (CALs); Windows Embedded; Windows operating system; Microsoft Office for business, including Office, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, and related CALs; Microsoft Dynamics business solutions; and Skype. Its commercial segment offers enterprise services, including premier support services and Microsoft consulting services; commercial cloud comprising Office 365 Commercial, other Microsoft Office online offerings, Dynamics CRM Online, and Microsoft Azure; and other commercial products and online services. The company markets and distributes its products through original equipment manufacturers, distributors, and resellers, as well as online.

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Learn more about Microsoft
Size
181,000 employees
Market Cap
$1,762.4 billion
Industry
Enterprise Technology
Net Income
$51.3 billion
Founded
1975
5 Year Trend
+15.5%
Revenue
$153.2 billion
NASDAQ
MSFT
* Ladders Estimates

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