Principal Software Engineer

Microsoft is a company where passionate innovators come to collaborate, envision what can be and take their careers further. This is a world of more possibilities, more innovation, more openness, and the sky is the limit thinking in a cloud-enabled world.

Microsoft's Azure Data engineering team is leading the transformation of analytics in the world of data with products like databases, data integration, big data analytics, messaging & real-time analytics, and business intelligence. The products our portfolio include Microsoft Fabric, Azure SQL DB, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure PostgreSQL, Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Service Bus, Azure Event Grid, and Power BI. Our mission is to build the data platform for the age of AI, powering a new class of data-first applications and driving a data culture.

Within Azure Data, the databases team builds and maintains Microsoft's operational Database systems. We store and manage data in a structured way to enable multitude of applications across various industries. We are on a journey to enable developer friendly, mission-critical, AI enabled operational Databases across relational, non-relational and OSS offerings.

Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL is a fully managed and serverless NoSQL and vector database for modern app development, including AI applications and agents. It is ideal for real-time NoSQL applications that require global presence, high performance and distributed computing over massive volumes of NoSQL and vector data. OpenAI relies on Cosmos DB to dynamically scale their ChatGPT service - one of the fastest-growing consumer apps ever - enabling high reliability and low maintenance.

The Cosmos DB team is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to work on enhancing the scalability and reliability of the Cosmos DB Control Plane, a global service responsible for provisioning, configuring, securing Cosmos DB resources. This role involves working closely with engineers within the team and across other Azure services to design, architect, and implement solutions that reliably process millions of operations per second.

If you're looking for an opportunity to grow, innovate, and make an impact in a rapidly changing industry, come work with us.

We do not just value differences or different perspectives. We seek them out and invite them in so we can tap into the collective power of everyone in the company. As a result, our customers are better served.

Responsibilities:

• Lead architectural design for complex, large-scale services, producing clear design documents that capture dependencies, trade-offs, and long-term scalability.
• Build and maintain high-quality, extensible, and reliable code, while defining comprehensive test strategies to ensure functionality, prevent regressions, and validate security.
• Collaborate with partner teams to ensure seamless integration, end-to-end testing, and operational readiness, including telemetry, scalability validation
• Ensure live-site excellence by leading on-call operations, improving troubleshooting guides, telemetry, and automation to enhance on-call effectiveness; recommend user-facing documentation and additional test coverage to reduce incidents.
• Engage directly with customers to understand scenarios, validate requirements, and incorporate feedback into design and solution improvements.
• Mentor engineers and lead by example in producing maintainable, secure, and performant code that adheres to design specifications.
• Produce technical blogs and content that showcase the scale, innovation, and engineering excellence of Cosmos DB, helping grow awareness and adoption across the developer community.

Embody our culture and values

Qualifications:

Required/Minimum 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 of experience building system designs and solutions on distributed 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/Additional Qualifications

• Experience designing, building, and operating large-scale NoSQL cloud databases (e.g., Cosmos DB, DynamoDB, Cassandra, MongoDB) with emphasis on scalability, availability, and observability.
• Experience c ollaborating with partner teams to ensure seamless integration, end-to-end testing, and operational readiness, including telemetry, scalability validation.
• Experience e ngaging directly with customers to understand scenarios, validate requirements, and incorporate feedback into design and solution improvements.

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 October 16, 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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