Principal Software Engineering Manager - Substrate- CTJ- Secret (Cleared Environments)

Microsoft is seeking a Principal Software Engineering Manager for its Substrate platform, which powers critical services like Exchange Online and M365 Copilot. The role involves leading a mixed team of Site Reliability Engineers and Software Engineers to ensure service reliability, operational excellence, and alignment with business goals.

Responsibilities:

• Lead and develop Site Reliability Engineering Managers, coaching them to build strong, accountable SRE organizations and scale operational excellence through others
• Lead a set of Software Engineering ICs, ensuring strong software engineering fundamentals, clear technical direction, and high-quality execution across the engineering lifecycle
• Own the end-to-end engineering and operational health of your organization’s services, balancing feature delivery, reliability, security, and compliance
• Establish and drive technical and organizational strategy for your area, aligning engineering investments with business priorities and long-term platform goals
• Guide engineering design and architecture decisions, ensuring reliability, diagnosability, security, and compliance are embedded early and consistently
• Drive strong incident management, learning culture, and post-incident reviews, emphasizing systemic improvements and long-term resilience
• Develop senior and principal-level talent, including succession planning for managers and technical leaders
• Partner closely with product, security, compliance, infrastructure, and operations teams to deliver durable, auditable, and scalable services
• Communicate clearly and credibly with leadership, articulating risks, tradeoffs, priorities, and progress across technical and organizational dimensions

Requirements:

• 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
• Candidates must be able to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements required for this role
• This role requires access to Microsoft Government cloud environments, including GCC Moderate (GCCM), GCC High (GCCH), and Department of Defense (DoD) environments
• The successful candidate must be able to obtain and maintain the appropriate background investigations and customer screenings required for access to these environments
• For access to GCCH and DoD environments, this role requires the ability to obtain and maintain a favorably adjudicated Tier 3 (T3) background investigation
• For access to GCCM environments, this role requires the ability to meet Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) eligibility requirements
• Candidates may be considered without currently holding these background investigations, provided they are eligible for and able to successfully obtain them
• Candidates may begin work while required background investigations are in progress; however, failure to obtain or maintain the appropriate clearance and/or customer screening requirements may result in employment action up to and including termination
• This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter
• 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
• 4+ years people management experience
• Experience operating or supporting services in regulated, sovereign, or compliance-sensitive environments