Principal Software Engineer - Maia Model Enablement

Microsoft is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead end-to-end enablement of frontier AI models on Maia AI accelerators. The role defines technical strategy, leads cross-stack investigations, and drives performance, scalability, automation, validation, and platform improvements across model, software, infrastructure, and hardware teams.

Responsibilities:

• Define and drive the technical strategy required to enable new AI models, model architectures, and hardware generations on Maia
• Lead complex cross-stack investigations spanning models, serving systems, infrastructure, and hardware, driving resolution of systemic technical challenges
• Drive platform-wide improvements in performance, scalability, and serving capabilities that benefit multiple models and future hardware generations
• Create durable automation, validation, and engineering systems that improve the speed, reliability, and repeatability of model enablement across the organization
• Align model, software, infrastructure, and hardware teams around shared technical direction, execution plans, and long-term platform investments
• We work across the entire software stack, from model architectures and serving systems to infrastructure and hardware interactions
• The problems we solve evolve throughout the lifecycle of both models and hardware platforms. Engineers on the team regularly become effective in new domains and develop deep expertise when needed
• We rely heavily on measurement, experimentation, automation, and AI-assisted engineering workflows to move quickly and scale our impact
• We partner closely with model, software, and hardware teams to deliver production-ready solutions
• Multiple generations of models and hardware can be enabled more quickly because of architectural, platform, or process improvements you have driven
• Performance, scalability, and reliability improvements benefit broad classes of workloads rather than individual deployments
• Recurring technical challenges are transformed into reusable platform capabilities rather than repeatedly solved as one-off issues
• The organization is better prepared to adopt future hardware generations because of investments made ahead of need
• Maia model enablement becomes faster, more predictable, and more scalable across teams and workloads

Requirements:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 6+ 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
• Understanding of modern AI model architectures, inference systems, performance optimization, and serving stacks
• Experience diagnosing and resolving complex problems that span models, software, systems, infrastructure, and hardware
• Experience enabling software on new hardware platforms, accelerators, or large-scale systems through activities such as bring-up, performance characterization, hardware-software debugging, or platform enablement
• Experience leveraging modern engineering tools, including AI-assisted workflows, automation, and agents, to improve productivity and accelerate technical investigation
• Demonstrated ability to identify high-impact technical investments, drive them from concept through production, and create durable capabilities that improve how engineering work is performed
• Technical judgment and experience leading cross-team technical initiatives across complex and ambiguous problem spaces
• Ability to balance immediate delivery needs with long-term platform strategy and architectural direction