Microsoft

Senior Software Engineer

Microsoft$119K — $234K *
Information Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field and 4+ years experience in coding with C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python, or equivalent experience.
  • Master's Degree in Computer Science or related field and 6+ years experience in coding, or Bachelor's Degree with 8+ years experience, or equivalent experience.
  • Hands-on experience in designing, building, or operating distributed systems with a focus on performance and scalability.
  • Understanding of software design patterns and best practices in large, dynamic codebases.
  • Familiarity with big data processing and streaming technologies (e.g., Hadoop, Spark, Kafka).
  • Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to navigate complex systems and tradeoffs.
  • Excellent communication and collaboration skills across teams.

Responsibilities

  • Design, build, and evolve large-scale platforms for processing and storing billions of documents focusing on engineering goals like availability, latency, and quality.
  • Utilize a metrics-driven approach in feature design and shipping to define success and measure impact.
  • Collaborate with data scientists and engineers to drive progress within computer vision and machine learning domains.
  • Build and maintain services for large-scale experimentation and research to promote rapid iteration and resource efficiency.
  • Evaluate and implement emerging technologies to enhance system efficiency and search experience.
  • Adopt AI-native engineering practices to boost developer productivity and software quality while ensuring system reliability.

Benefits

  • Diverse and inclusive work environment.
  • Encouragement of applications from candidates of all backgrounds.
  • Support for continuous learning and a growth mindset.
  • Collaboration opportunities across multifaceted engineering and research teams.
Full Job Description
Overview

The Bing Multimedia team powers image and video search across Bing and other Microsoft products. In our team, you'll help deliver world-class experiences for both query-driven and exploratory browse scenarios-enabling users to discover, understand, and act on visual information.

Our experiences are powered by state-of-the-art ML models and highly scalable infrastructure built for global reach and measurable impact. As search has evolved from text to voice and increasingly multimodal interactions, deep understanding of visual content-objects, concepts, and entities in images and videos-has become central to building rich, insightful experiences that help users complete real tasks.

As a Senior Software Engineer in the team, you will own the offline infrastructure enabling these capabilities end-to-end. You will work with a mix of open-source and Microsoft-built frameworks, solving hard problems where latency, cost, availability, and quality are first-class engineering metrics.

We are also AI-native: we actively adopt modern, AI-assisted engineering practices to improve development velocity and quality-leveraging tools and workflows that help us design, build, test, and operate services more effectively while maintaining solid engineering fundamentals.

Responsibilities
  • Design, build, and evolve large-scale platforms for processing and storing billions of documents, with availability, latency, cost efficiency, and quality treated as first-class engineering goals.
  • Apply a metrics-driven engineering mindset when designing and shipping features-defining success criteria upfront and using data to drive prioritization, iteration, and measurable impact.
  • Partner with and empower scientists and engineers working across big data, computer vision, and machine learning, enabling rapid progress in a fast-evolving technical landscape.
  • Build and operate services that support large-scale experimentation and research, enabling fast iteration and learning while ensuring efficient utilization of compute, storage, and other shared resources.
  • Continuously evaluate and adopt emerging technologies, including hardware acceleration and modern search and AI techniques, to improve system efficiency and elevate the end-to-end search experience.
  • Embrace AI-native and AI-assisted engineering practices to improve developer productivity, code quality, and operational excellence-while maintaining solid fundamentals in reliability, security, and correctness.


Qualifications

Required Qualifications:
  • Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 4+ 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 6+ 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 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
    • OR equivalent experience.
  • Hands-on experience designing, building, or operating distributed systems, with an emphasis on performance, reliability, availability, and scalability.
  • Experience applying established software design patterns and engineering best practices in large, evolving codebases.
  • Familiarity with large-scale data processing and streaming technologies (for example: Hadoop, Spark, Kafka, or similar systems).
  • Solid problem-solving and critical-thinking skills, with the ability to reason about complex systems and tradeoffs.
  • Effective communication skills and a demonstrated ability to collaborate across engineering, research, and partner teams.
  • A growth mindset and passion for delivering high-quality user experiences, continuously learning and adapting as technologies evolve.
  • Experience driving engineering excellence at scale, balancing speed and innovation with quality, reliability, and operational rigor.
  • Interest in or experience with AI-assisted and AI-native engineering practices to improve developer productivity and software quality.


#MicrosoftAI

Software Engineering IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $119,800 - $234,700 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 $158,400 - $258,000 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
Net Income
$51.3 billion
Founded
1975
5 Year Trend
+15.5%
Revenue
$153.2 billion
NASDAQ

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