Microsoft

Principal Software Engineer, Security AI

Microsoft • $150K — $200K *
Mountain View, CA 94040In-Person
Information Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Today
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Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field; 6+ years of coding experience in languages like C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python.
  • Master's or PhD in relevant field, or equivalent industry experience preferred.
  • 5+ years building AI-enabled systems in cloud environments with hands-on model development.
  • Strong design experience in APIs, service architecture, and secure software development for reliability and scalability.
  • Experience with advanced AI techniques including vector databases, embeddings, and semantic search.
  • Familiarity with Azure Cloud services and security operations.
  • Proven ability to communicate technical tradeoffs and strategies with stakeholders.

Responsibilities

  • Design, build, and operate AI-powered software services for security engineering in Microsoft’s cloud.
  • Develop AI workflows to aid engineering teams in analysis and decision-making.
  • Create scalable systems leveraging large language models and related AI techniques for security applications.
  • Establish evaluation methods for AI system quality and effectiveness in production.
  • Collaborate with multiple teams to implement AI advancements into secure platform capabilities.
  • Ensure compliance with responsible AI and security considerations in AI-powered systems' deployment.
  • Guide production readiness through architectural improvements and incident response supports.

Benefits

  • Comprehensive health coverage including vision and dental.
  • Paid time off, including vacation and holidays.
  • Opportunities for professional development and continuing education.
  • Flexible work arrangements to support work-life balance.
  • Employee discounts on various products and services.
Full Job Description
Responsibilities
  • Design, build, and operate AI-powered software services that support security engineering across Microsoft's cloud environment.
  • Develop AI-enabled workflows that help engineering and security teams analyze information, retrieve relevant context, summarize findings, and make faster, higher-quality decisions.
  • Build scalable systems that use large language models, retrieval-augmented generation, embeddings, semantic search, knowledge graphs, and related AI techniques to support security scenarios.
  • Create evaluation, measurement, and monitoring approaches that help assess AI system quality, reliability, safety, and effectiveness in production environments.
  • Partner with engineering, applied science, product, security operations, and other teams to translate AI advances into practical, secure, durable and reliable platform capabilities.
  • Incorporate responsible AI, privacy, security, and compliance considerations into the design, deployment, and operation of AI-powered systems.
  • Contribute to production readiness for services, including architecture, APIs, reliability, scalability, observability, cost efficiency, incident response, and continuous improvement.
  • Provide technical leadership through design documents, architecture discussions, code reviews, and collaboration with partner teams.
  • Mentor engineers and help raise the engineering bar through thoughtful technical guidance, high-quality implementation, and operational excellence.
  • Use data, telemetry, partner feedback, and operational learnings to continuously improve AI capabilities, system reliability, and platform impact.


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:

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:

  • 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 or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, or related technical field, OR equivalent industry experience.
  • 5+ years of hands-on experience building AI, machine learning, or large language model-enabled systems, including model or agent development, retrieval and knowledge systems, data pipelines, evaluation, safety, experimentation, and productionization in large-scale cloud environments.
  • Experience designing reliable and scalable software systems with strong fundamentals in APIs, service architecture, data modeling, testing, debugging, observability, incident response, and secure software development.
  • Experience building multi-agent systems, tool-use frameworks, orchestration layers, autonomous workflows, or AI copilots in production environments.
  • Experience with vector databases, embeddings, semantic search, knowledge graphs, entity resolution, ranking, summarization, or context-grounding systems.
  • Experience with LLM evaluation, responsible AI, model safety, hallucination mitigation, prompt injection defense, model monitoring, or AI governance controls.
  • Experience with cloud security, security operations, threat detection, incident response, vulnerability management, identity and access systems, or security data platforms.
  • Experience with Azure services, Azure AI, Azure OpenAI, Microsoft Defender, Sentinel, Kusto, Kubernetes, or large-scale telemetry and analytics systems.
  • Demonstrated ability to influence senior technical stakeholders, create durable architecture, mentor engineers, and deliver high-impact platform capabilities in ambiguous problem spaces.
  • Strong communication skills with the ability to articulate technical tradeoffs, security impact, risks, and strategy to engineering leaders, partner teams, and cross-functional stakeholders.


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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