Principal Software Engineer (AI)

TL;DR

Principal Software Engineer (AI): Leading the development of security features and innovative solutions that harness agentic AI to protect customers. Focus on designing and implementing secure orchestration frameworks and applying intelligent agents for security and privacy.

Location: Must work from a designated Microsoft office at least four days a week if living within 50 miles (U.S.) or 25 miles (non-U.S.) of that location.

Salary: USD $139,900 – $274,800 per year (The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S.) or USD $188,000 – $304,200 per year (within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area)

Company

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

What you will do

• Develop and ship agentic AI-powered security features that proactively protect users from threats.
• Design and implement secure orchestration frameworks that enable Copilot to safely delegate, coordinate, and execute actions.
• Invent and apply new intelligent agents that leverage information flow analysis and apply common sense and judgement guardrails for security and privacy.
• Collaborate with product, engineering, security, privacy, and AI teams to drive adoption of agentic security patterns.
• Establish and monitor key metrics for agentic AI security and innovation, using data-driven insights to continuously improve defenses and enablement.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 6+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR equivalent experience.
• 8+ years in technical engineering roles building large-scale services.
• 6+ years hands-on experience designing and operating security-critical or AI-powered systems at scale, including agentic AI, secure orchestration, or advanced threat defenses.
• Proven ability to design, build, and ship agentic AI features or frameworks.

Nice to have

• 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.
• Experience building production agent systems using frameworks such as LangGraph, Amazon Strands SDK, or similar platforms.
• Hands-on experience with distributed training frameworks (Ray, Slurm, HPC), containerization and orchestration technologies (Docker, Kubernetes) for ML model deployment, and ML lifecycle management in production environments.
• Experience integrating with Azure AI services, Azure OpenAI Service, or Microsoft security platforms (Azure AD, Defender, Purview).

Culture & Benefits

• Come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize shared goals.
• Build on values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.