Principal Software Engineer

Help Microsoft define the next generation of technologies and features available on GPUs and Displays! The CoreOS Display Team is responsible for building and maintaining the foundational components that power display functionality across the Windows ecosystem. This includes developing various cutting-edge technologies like Variable Refresh Rate, HDR/Dolby Vision, Night light and color calibration, Remote Desktop, USB Displays, Multi-display support etc. The team works closely with hardware partners to ensure high performance, reliability, power efficiency and seamless display user experiences across local and cloud-based environments. Our components power innovations in Gaming, Media, AI and beyond.

In Core OS, we are responsible for the Operating Systems that power Azure, Microsoft's Linux OS, the platforms for Windows Client, Xbox, and our Windows Server ecosystem - through all of these, we support every one of our cloud businesses and billions of customers around the world. In this era of ubiquitous computing, systems software excellence has never been more important for Microsoft. High quality, high-efficiency operating systems and platform components underpin everything we do as a company, from making our systems more reliable for our customers, to increasing our competitiveness by reducing COGS, to delivering new features and capabilities to delight customers - that's all us!

As a Principal Software Engineer in the Display Kernel team, you will work with industry partners to identify new opportunities for driving the display ecosystem forward with critical (and exciting) new features. You will collaborate with internal and external partners to understand the user requirements as well as hardware capabilities, define the OS abstractions to expose new features/capabilities and deliver end-to-end solutions for our customers. You will build a deep technical ownership over the feature spaces you work in, and your expertise will help other teams - both inside and outside of Microsoft - deliver valuable products built on your work. This position requires a good understanding of driver development, kernel-mode programming, and hardware architectures particularly display subsystems.

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.
• Leads by example and mentors others to produce extensible and maintainable code used across products.
• Leverages subject-matter expertise 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.

Qualifications:

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, or related technical discipline 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.
• 4+ years of Windows OS architecture, driver models, and memory management or similar experience in other operating systems.

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:

• Bachelor'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#, or Rust OR equivalent experience.
• Experience with Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) and various other display technologies like HDR, HDMI/DisplayPort, DisplayID/EDID etc.
• Experience as a deeply technical leader shipping large systems software projects.
• Experience with systems programming in the kernel as well as user mode Graphics APIs like Direct3D/OpenGL/Vulcan.
• User and kernel mode debugging skills utilizing various tools like Windbg/Visual Studio etc.

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 July 22, 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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