Principal Software Engineer - AI/ML

Overview

Microsoft's Path team helps customers along their journey from the initial idea to the final realization of their goals from Idea-to-Plan-to-Done.

Our team is responsible for collaborative Work Management products including Microsoft Project, Planner, To Do, and Visio. With Project and Planner, we help customers collaborate effectively to navigate complexity, determine critical paths, and orchestrate their plans to achieve more. With To Do and Tasks, we help customers capture, prioritize, and complete their aspirations and goals along their path to success. With Visio, we help customers model and conceptualize information pathways through process diagrams, organizational charts, and more to visualize what it is and what it can be. Collectively, we're responsible for an incredible portfolio of products and services that help guide people and organizations along their journey to achieve more. Microsoft, being a leader in AI space, we are heavily investing in building new AI tools, agents, skills, and MCP servers.

The Principal Software Engineer - AI, ML for our team will operate as a senior technical leader shaping the AI foundations that power Microsoft Path org's products and platforms at a global scale. This role acts as a strategic and hands-on engineer that works across Core AI, Data Scientists, Software Engineers, Data Engineers, and Product Managers while bringing in deep Machine Learning expertise for supervised and unsupervised learning. As we pivot to build AI-first platforms, this engineer is expected to embed AI-native thinking into delivery models, apply and fine-tune ML algorithms for personalization, and build intelligent, scalable, and innovative solutions to solve customer problems.

Microsoft's mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. By integrating the power of generative AI with tools for workflow management you will directly contribute to that mission empowering customers to achieve at a pace and scale beyond what has previously been considered possible.

Responsibilities

AI-first Technical Leadership

• Solve complex challenges in distributed systems and help shape the vision for agentic, AI-powered work management.
• Architect and implement core features for the Task and Work Management platform. Ensure secure, high-quality product delivery, overseeing system architecture and code quality.
• Lead end-to-end delivery of complex projects with AI-powered solutions that are scalable, robust, and aligned with customer needs as well as business outcomes that support millions of customers and requests per second.
• Embed AI-first mindset into design, development, testing, and developer tooling to streamline SDLC delivery workflows, leveraging automation and agent orchestration.
• Drive engineering excellence through reusable components, accelerators, code generators, and scalable architecture.
• Oversee technical execution across multiple projects, ensuring adherence to best practices, quality standards, and security & privacy compliance requirements.
• Collaborate with internal stakeholders and external partner teams to define architecture, integration points, delivery plans, milestones, and risk mitigation approaches.
• Ensure delivery models are optimized for modern AI-native execution, including integration of automation and intelligent processes.

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.

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 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.
• Design and implement agentic AI workflows that assist in data discovery, preparation, profiling, validation, and performance optimization.
• 5+ years of experience designing and implementing hyperscale distributed platforms and cloud services.
• Experience in high-scale service architecture, Azure technologies (Azure Kubernetes Service, Cosmos DB, Blob Storage), and modern cloud patterns.
• Actively adopt and promote use Large Language Models and apply Machine Learning algorithms to automate engineering tasks, schema inference, pipeline generation, metadata enrichment, documentation, and tuning recommendations.
• Expertise in building solutions using Azure Machine Learning, Azure OpenAI, and Azure AI Services including RAG pipelines and inference workloads (OR equivalent technologies in AWS or Google Cloud Platform or OCI).

#Microsoft #Path #Planner #Project #ProjectManagement #M365 #WorkManagement #TaskManagement #TaskPlatform #AI #Agent #Orchestration

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>
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.