Software Engineer II (Windows)

Overview

Do you want to make a direct impact on hundreds of millions of devices every month and experience the satisfaction of protecting millions of customers from the ever-growing threats of cyberattacks? Are you passionate about delivering high-value innovation at scale? Do you have the engineering expertise, attention to detail, and commitment to quality needed to build systems and services that delight customers and help them stay productive?

The Windows Servicing and Delivery (WSD) team is hiring for a Software Engineer II to join a collaborative, customer-focused group tackling unique engineering challenges and offering countless opportunities to learn and grow your career. Our mission is to keep the Windows ecosystem secure and productive by providing a seamless, timely servicing experience for current and future versions of Windows. We deliver high-quality servicing releases that protect and empower Microsoft customers by continuously building and deploying Windows Operating System updates to consumers, enterprises, and Microsoft Cloud customers. The right candidate thrives in ambiguity, enjoys building lasting systems in partnership with others, and values solutions that are cost-effective, reliable, and scalable.

The Windows Containment Team plays a critical role in ensuring safe, agile delivery of Windows updates through feature flags and rollback mechanisms, enabling experimentation at scale. Key responsibilities include developing containment platforms, leading incident response with Known Issue Rollback (KIR), implementing security and vulnerability mitigations, coordinating controlled feature rollouts, and collaborating across teams. As part of this team, you will help build a world-class feature control framework for Windows Client and Windows Server platforms. This framework enables large-scale feature development, experimentation across more than one billion Windows devices, and improved resiliency. In this role, you will tackle complex problems at the lowest kernel level, create new capabilities that allow thousands of fixes to be managed via the cloud, and innovate with AI-driven engineering systems to operate at scale. You will own multiple features, giving you both breadth and depth of experience.

We are looking for experienced developers who write dependable software. If you have a track record of designing, owning, and shipping software, along with effective communication and collaboration skills, we want to hear from you. You should have a proven understanding of the software development lifecycle-from architecture to testing-and a passion for quality and creative problem-solving. You will write secure, reliable, scalable, and maintainable code, and then debug, test, and support it in production. You should feel comfortable owning features and making independent decisions, while also helping to build the skills and effectiveness of the developers around you.

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

• Design and develop software and services at scale, innovating on the latest technologies and following modern engineering practices.
• Contribute to the identification of dependencies, and the development of design documents for a product area with little oversight. Help identify other teams and technologies that will be leveraged, how they will interact, and when one's system may provide support to others. Contribute to determining back-end dependencies associated with product, application, service, or platform functionality for product features.
• Identify areas of efforts to integrate instrumentation for gathering telemetry data on system behavior such as performance, reliability, availability, usage, and safety mechanisms. Contribute to sustaining feedback loops from telemetry resulting in subsequent designs. Help create outputs of telemetry such as notifications or dashboards.
• Maintain close technical relationship with partner teams and drive for engineering excellence and results.
• Embody our culture and values.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 2+ 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:

• 3+ years programming experience in C / C++/C# or equivalent
• 3+ years development experience working on all phases of a development cycle
• Functional understanding of Windows operating system internals.
• Proficiency in building cloud-native applications on Azure.
• Hands-on experience with OpenAI APIs or similar LLM-based platforms.

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Software Engineering IC3 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $100,600 - $199,000 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 $131,400 - $215,400 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
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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.