Principal Software Engineer

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Microsoft is on a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world. You can help us to achieve our mission.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is the conversational core of Microsoft Copilot —where enterprise AI meets productivity. It’s the default interface through which users summarize meetings, draft emails, generate insights from enterprise data, and coordinate with teams using natural language. As Microsoft accelerates its AI-first strategy, Chat isn’t just a feature—it’s the gateway. It’s the most visible and critical surface for AI-powered work.

As a Principal Software Engineer, you’ll lead the creation of next-generation conversational experiences for Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat. Your mission is to accelerate delivery by shaping engineering systems that enable rapid iteration, continuous deployment, and resilient live-site operations. You’ll design frameworks for experimentation, automate release and monitoring processes, and embed AI-driven solutions to optimize workflows and elevate user experience. This role demands a visionary who can balance speed with reliability, ensuring seamless performance at global scale while mentoring teams and influencing product direction. If you thrive on innovation, automation, and building systems that empower agility, this is your opportunity to lead from the front. You will work closely with world-class principal and partner engineers and leaders, for a product that is at the epicenter of Microsoft.

What makes this role unique:
Massive surface area & impact: Your work directly shapes the foundation of Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat.
Impact at Scale: Shape the future of enterprise productivity for millions of users worldwide.
AI-Driven Innovation: Apply cutting-edge AI to transform engineering systems and user experiences.
End-to-End Ownership: Influence everything from experimentation frameworks to live site reliability.
Culture of Agility: Drive rapid iteration and continuous delivery while maintaining world-class reliability.
Cross-Disciplinary Leadership: Collaborate with UX, AI, and platform teams to deliver breakthrough experiences.

How we work:
Customer-obsessed & data-informed: We form bold hypotheses, ship safely, measure rigorously, and iterate.
Fundamentals at the core: We invest in building solid foundation that enables teams to build and ship innovation.
Engineering excellence: We invest in tests, telemetry, agentic coding enablement, and continuous hardening to earn the right to go faster.
Inclusive at our core: We welcome diverse perspectives and design accessible experiences for a global audience.
Outcomes over output: We celebrate learning and hold ourselves accountable to business and customer impact

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

Required Qualifications:

• 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.
• 6+ years of proven track record of leading architecture initiatives with a focus on engineering systems and core infrastructure.
  
• Technical Leadership: Proven experience designing and shipping complex, high-scale systems with strong UX focus.
  
• Engineering Systems Expertise: Deep knowledge of CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, release management, telemetry, and monitoring.
  
• DevOps & Automation: Strong background in automated testing, deployment pipelines, and operational excellence.
  
• AI Integration: Familiarity with AI/ML concepts and experience applying them to user-facing features and developer workflows.
  
• Performance & Reliability: Track record of building resilient systems with measurable performance metrics

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 Qualifications:

• 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.
• Modern Web & App Development: Expertise in React, TypeScript, and cloud-native architectures (Azure preferred).
• Security, compliance, privacy‑by‑design mindset; experience with cost‑aware engineering.
• Solid collaborator with PM and design; communicates clearly with both technical and non-technical audiences

#M365Core #agility #copilot #microsoft365copilot #microsoft365chat

• Drive Agility: Architect and implement solutions for faster, more frequent deployments, rapid iteration, and continuous delivery. Integrate AI-driven capabilities to streamline development, enhance live site operations, and accelerate innovation.
• Engineering Systems Leadership: Design and evolve robust engineering systems—build pipelines, release systems, telemetry, and observability frameworks.
• Hold accountability as a Designated Responsible Individual (DRI), mentoring engineers across products/solutions, working on-call to monitor system/product/service for degradation, downtime, or interruptions.
• Drive cross-team collaboration with partner teams across the various parts of Microsoft. Leverage subject-matter expertise of cross-product features with appropriate stakeholders (e.g., project managers) to drive multiple group's project plans, release plans, and work items.
• Mentor engineers and influence technical direction across the M365 Copilot Chat Fundamentals org, fostering a culture of excellence, growth mindset, and continuous learning.
• Model our culture of growth mindset, clarity, accountability, and inclusive behaviors, removing systemic blockers so your team ships with speed and quality.
• Embody our culture and values.