Principal Software Engineer

Core AI is at the forefront of Microsoft's mission to redefine how software is built and experienced. We are responsible for building the foundational platforms, services, programming models, and developer experiences that power the next generation of applications using Generative AI. Our work enables developers and enterprises to harness the full potential of AI to create intelligent, adaptive, and transformative software.

We build platforms to handle AI workloads for customers and have a significant business impact on products that ship across all Microsoft groups as well as enterprise customers.

We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer who will define the future of engineering systems and developer productivity. In this role, you will build high-scale distributed services to support large scale state of the art model training and inference.

Microsoft's mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

We seek a highly innovative and experienced engineer to take the path ahead for services to support machine learning solutions, work on highly distributed platforms with 24x7x365 service availability and tight SLA and build comprehensive and intuitive end-end solutions to delight our customers.

• Work on the architecture, design and development of the core compute services powering AzureML to tackle challenging AI problems using state-of-the-art LLM models such as GPT5 and OSS models.
• Work on the architecture, design, and development of the core AI Infrastructure services that support large scale AI training and inferencing.
• Develop, test, and maintain backend services written in C#, Go, Rust, C++, hosted on Kubernetes clusters and Docker containers.
• Develop and operate training/inference infra framework and machine learning systems.
• Enhance systems and applications to ensure high stability, efficiency, & maintainability, low latency, tight cloud security.
• Provide operational support and DRI responsibilities for the product.
• Collaborate closely with engineers, data scientists within the team, internal Microsoft Research teams and external enterprises to build better solutions together.
• Provide vision, expertise, and technical leadership to other team members.

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#, Rus, Go, Java, or Python
  • OR equivalent experience.
• 3+ years of experience operating and designing systems which support large model training.

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:

• Knowledge and first-hand experience with large model training system.
• Experience in distributed systems and architecture.
• AI infrastructure and workload knowledge.

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Software Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $139,900 - $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.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.