Principal Software Engineer

Microsoft develops Microsoft 365 productivity, collaboration, and AI experiences, including Copilot, Agents, PAC, and the Substrate platform. The Principal Software Engineer will define hardware strategy and hardware-software co-design, establish performance evaluation frameworks, investigate distributed systems and AI service challenges, and lead cross-organizational efforts to improve performance, efficiency, and scalability.

Responsibilities:

• Drive hardware strategy and hardware-software co-design for Microsoft 365, Copilot, Agents, PAC, and Substrate workloads
• Define benchmarking, workload characterization, and performance evaluation frameworks used to influence platform and infrastructure decisions across compute, gpu, memory, storage, networking, and accelerator technologies
• Lead deep technical investigations into performance, efficiency, and scalability challenges across large-scale distributed systems and AI-powered services
• Partner with Azure, infrastructure, and platform engineering teams to evaluate emerging hardware technologies and translate platform capabilities into meaningful customer and business impact
• Build the next generation of AI-assisted performance engineering capabilities, enabling faster analysis, diagnosis, optimization, and decision-making across Microsoft 365 services
• Provide technical leadership across organizational boundaries, influencing architecture, platform direction, and engineering practices at Microsoft 365 scale

Requirements:

• • Bachelor'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 equivalent experience
• 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:
• • Master'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 Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 15+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
  • OR equivalent experience
• • Proven track record leading performance, systems, infrastructure, or hardware strategy initiatives for large-scale cloud services
• • Deep understanding of distributed systems, computer architecture, performance engineering, benchmarking, and workload analysis
• • Experience using data, experimentation, and technical analysis to influence platform, architecture, or infrastructure investment decisions
• • Demonstrated ability to lead cross-organizational technical efforts and influence senior engineering leaders
• • Experience applying AI to engineering workflows, performance analysis, diagnostics, optimization, or operational decision-making
• • Experience with AI infrastructure, large-scale inference workloads, retrieval systems, agent platforms, or Copilot-style architectures
• • Experience evaluating emerging hardware platforms and translating hardware capabilities into product and platform advantages
• • Experience building AI-assisted engineering systems for diagnostics, performance analysis, optimization, or operational intelligence