Principal Software Engineer

Overview

Security represents the most critical priorities for our customers in a world awash in digital threats, regulatory scrutiny, and estate complexity. Microsoft Security aspires to make the world a safer place for all. We want to reshape security and empower every user, customer, and developer with a security cloud that protects them with end to end, simplified solutions. The Microsoft Security organization accelerates Microsoft's mission and bold ambitions to ensure that our company and industry is securing digital technology platforms, devices, and clouds in our customers' heterogeneous environments, as well as ensuring the security of our own internal estate. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world.

We are hiring a Principal Software Engineer to join the Identity & Network Access Team and help us on our mission of securing access to world's online resources by building and operating an authorization platform with world class fundamentals that makes Entra and Azure customers the most secure and productive in the world. We innovate on multiple technical aspects: 1. Architecting services for large scale and low latency requirements to handle millions of requests per minute completing under 10ms. 2. Security investments that span authorization frameworks such as role-based and attribute-based. 3. Experiences to understand access to resources in a way that is simple to comprehend and achieve least standing privileges. 4. Build a resilient platform that works for all services offered by Azure and Microsoft as well as extend to work where our customer enterprises run their applications beyond Azure. 5. Secure Applications across all the services to reduce the surface area by granular controls and having least standing privileges between systems. 6. Operating services in an efficient and hands-free manner.

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.

This Hybrid Position is located at our Microsoft office in Redmond, Washington. Relocation support will be provided, and successful candidates will need to relocate or reside within 50 miles of the field location.

Responsibilities

• Design and build features for large-scale distributed services.
• Communicate technical details effectively across teams and customers.
• Apply modern engineering practices through design and code reviews.
• Define system architecture with clear interfaces and leverage telemetry for decisions.
• Ensure services are modular, secure, reliable, diagnosable, monitored, and reusable.
• Write clean, optimized code; improve test coverage; implement integration tests; resolve issues.
• Prioritize testability, reliability, maintainability, and readiness for delivery.
• Collaborate with mentors and leaders to deliver cohesive end-to-end user experiences.
• Use data-driven insights to meet customer needs and advocate for strong authorization standards.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, or related technical discipline AND 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including: C#, Rust, Go, Java or C++
  • 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.

Additional or Preferred Qualifications:

• Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 10+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including: C#, Rust, Go, Java or C++
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 12+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including: C#, Rust, Go, Java or C++
    • OR equivalent experience.
• 6+ years of experience designing, building, and operating scalable, highly available cloud services or distributed systems on platforms such as Azure, AWS, Google Cloud Platform, or comparable cloud environments, with production ownership and CI/CD pipeline integration.
• 6+ years of experience building systems with emphasis on reliability, durability, and operational efficiency, including experience with live site operations, incident response, and performance optimization.
• 6+ years of experience driving complex, cross-functional initiatives, influencing architecture and engineering practices, and mentoring peers.

#MSFTSecurity

Software Engineering IC6 - 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:


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.