Principal Software Engineer - AI Driven Configuration & Experimentation Platform

ECS (Experiments and Configuration Service) is the backbone of Microsoft's experimentation and configuration ecosystem, powering safe rollouts and controlled experimentation across M365, Copilot, and Azure. We are expanding beyond core experimentation into next-generation platforms for change inventory intelligence and AI-powered RCA agents, aiming to redefine how engineers troubleshoot, learn from incidents, and continuously improve service reliability.

As a Principal Software Engineer in AI Driven Configuration & Experimentation Platform, you will lead the design and evolution of large-scale distributed systems that empower thousands of developers across Microsoft. You'll collaborate with partner teams, influence long-term strategy, and shape the architecture for high-reliability experimentation, change management, and AI-driven operational quality. This opportunity will allow you to: Drive company-wide impact by defining technical strategy and standards for experimentation, change inventory, and incident analysis; Partner with leaders across engineering and product to solve systemic challenges in safe rollouts, telemetry, and the automation of root cause analysis (RCA); Mentor engineers and raise the bar for engineering quality, design rigor, and AI-augmented developer experience.

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:

• Partners with appropriate stakeholders to determine user requirements for a set of scenarios.
• Leads identification of dependencies and the development of design documents for a product, application, service, or platform.
• Leverages subject-matter knowledge of cross-product features with appropriate stakeholders (e.g., project managers) to drive multiple group's project plans, release plans, and work items.
• Holds accountability as a Designated Responsible Individual (DRI), mentoring engineers across products/solutions, working on-call to monitor system/product/service for degradation, downtime, or interruptions.
• Proactively seeks new knowledge and adapts to new trends, technical solutions, and patterns that will improve the availability, reliability, efficiency, observability, and performance of products while also driving consistency in monitoring and operations at scale and shares knowledge with other engineers.
• Lead technical strategy and architecture for ECS, shaping the future of experimentation, configuration, and change intelligence platforms used across M365, Copilot, and Azure.

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.
• 5+ years experience in designing and building large-scale distributed system, developer platforms, or ML powered backend services.

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.
• 3+ years deep technical focus in one or more of the following areas:
  • Context modeling and embedding systems (e.g., code understanding, semantic retrieval, telemetry correlation).
  • Intelligent developer or operational assistants (e.g., Copilot, Amazon Q, Claude or similar AI integrated workflows).
  • Change management, deployment safety, and reliability engineering.
  • Deep understanding of cloud infrastructure (Azure, AWS, or equivalent), service orchestration, and CI/CD pipelines at global scale.

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: ;br>
Microsoft will accept applications for the role until November 3, 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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