Principal Engineering Manager

Imagine a world where AI agents seamlessly integrate into your daily work conversations, automatically handling tasks, providing insights, and connecting you with the right tools and information at exactly the right moment. That's the future we're building at Microsoft Teams AI Platform. Our team is creating the foundational platform that makes this vision possible - we're the engine behind Microsoft's strategy to make Teams the central hub where humans and AI collaborate effortlessly. From powering familiar experiences like Copilot and Calendar to enabling thousands of third-party integrations, our work directly impacts how millions of people get work done every day. Now we're taking this foundation to the next level, building native AI agent experiences that will transform productivity across chats, channels, and meetings.

We're looking for an experienced Principal Engineering Manager to lead a team responsible for the backend platform services that power the Teams AI ecosystem. You'll manage the technical strategy and execution for the foundational services, data models, and APIs that enable AI agents and integrations to work seamlessly within Teams. Working with project managers and technical leads, you'll drive system requirements across multiple product lines, provide technical leadership for large-scale backend services, and coordinate project plans and release schedules across groups.

You'll lead resolution of complex production incidents for high-availability services, serve as a leader across end-user experiences and scenarios, and ensure backend systems meet scaling and performance expectations. The ideal candidate has proven experience managing backend engineering teams and deep technical expertise in distributed systems and large-scale service architectures.

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.

Responsibilities:

• Provide technical leadership for dependency identification and development of design documents for AI platform services, agent orchestration APIs, and intelligent workflow systems.
• Partner with project managers and technical leads across Microsoft to determine system requirements for AI agent integrations, MCP (Model Context Protocol) implementations, and multi-modal backend services for Teams.
• Drive code optimization, debugging, and refactoring initiatives to improve AI backend service performance, model inference efficiency, and ROI across the platform.
• Lead extensive cross-group collaboration, coordinating project plans and release schedules across Teams, Azure AI, M365, and partner engineering organizations.
• Spearhead resolution of complex production incidents for high-availability AI services and direct engineering efforts across multiple product lines and organizational boundaries.
• Stay informed of emerging AI platform standards (MCP, OpenAI APIs, multi-agent frameworks) and communicate best practices to ensure backend systems scale to meet evolving AI workload requirements and performance expectations.

Qualifications:

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, or related technical discipline 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.
• 5+ years experience managing backend engineering teams and complex distributed systems.
• Solid technical background in cloud platforms, microservices architecture, and high-availability service design.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master'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- 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.
• Experience leading cross-functional collaboration across multiple engineering organizations with strong incident response and ability to drive technical decisions in ambiguous environments.
• Experience with AI/ML platforms, agent orchestration systems, OpenAI APIs, or multi-agent frameworks
  
  Background working with Microsoft Azure, .NET, or Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
• Previous experience in platform or developer tools teams.

Software Engineering M6 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $163,000 - $296,400 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 $220,800 - $331,200 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: ;br>
Microsoft will accept applications for the role until August 28, 2025.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form .

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.

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