Senior and/or Principal Software Engineer - AI Frameworks

Microsoft’s AI Frameworks team develops software, performance systems, and engineering tools that enable state-of-the-art AI models to run reliably and efficiently at cloud scale. The role leads hands-on engineering across AI frameworks, performance engineering, benchmarking, automation, developer tooling, and production systems, with senior engineers owning significant projects and principal engineers setting technical direction for high-impact initiatives.

Responsibilities:

• Design, implement, test, and operate production-quality components across AI frameworks, runtimes, benchmarking systems, performance tooling, and service integrations
• Benchmark, profile, debug, and optimize large language model training and inference workloads across GPUs and Microsoft hardware
• Build automation and observability that detect regressions, improve reproducibility, surface actionable insights, and accelerate model and hardware onboarding
• Drive scoped projects from problem definition through deployment, balancing delivery speed, maintainability, reliability, and measurable customer or capacity impact
• Partner with researchers, model teams, infrastructure owners, and hardware vendors to diagnose cross-stack issues and deliver production-ready solutions
• Contribute to technical design reviews, engineering standards, operational health, and mentoring of other engineers
• Embody Microsoft’s culture and values
• Define technical vision, architecture, and multi-release strategy for critical AI framework, performance, benchmarking, or developer-productivity capabilities
• Lead ambiguous, cross-stack investigations and investments spanning models, frameworks, compilers, runtimes, systems, services, and silicon
• Establish common measurement, automation, observability, and engineering mechanisms that turn one-off analyses into scalable platform capabilities
• Drive measurable improvements in model onboarding velocity, runtime performance, reliability, hardware utilization, and Azure capacity efficiency
• Influence architecture and priorities across teams; align researchers, product groups, infrastructure owners, and hardware partners around clear decisions and execution plans
• Provide hands-on technical leadership through prototypes, critical-path implementation, design and code reviews, complex debugging, and operational readiness
• Raise the engineering bar by mentoring senior engineers, developing technical leaders, and advancing standards for quality, maintainability, and inclusive collaboration
• Embody Microsoft’s culture and values

Requirements:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 4+ years of technical engineering experience coding in languages such as C++, 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: Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter
• Experience building and operating complex software systems
• Practical knowledge of performance analysis, benchmarking, automation, or developer tooling
• Familiarity with AI/ML frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or ONNX Runtime
• Familiarity with GPU software and profiling technologies such as CUDA, ROCm, Triton, or equivalent
• Demonstrated cross-team collaboration and technical ownership
• Extensive experience designing and shipping complex, high-performance or distributed software systems
• Experience in software architecture, computer architecture, and accelerator-aware optimization
• Experience with AI/ML workloads and frameworks
• Demonstrated leadership of cross-team technical initiatives from strategy through production
• Track record of creating reusable platforms, influencing senior stakeholders, and mentoring technical leaders