Principal Software Engineering (AI)

TL;DR

Principal Software Engineering (AI): Designing, developing, and maintaining performant and secure AI Platform services that power Copilot with an accent on scaling backend technologies and architecting solutions. Focus on building next generation AI products and services, ensuring reliability, scalability, and performance of platform components.

Location: Beijing, China. Starting January 26, 2026, employees who live within a 25-mile commute of a non-U.S., country-specific location are expected to work from the office at least four days per week.

Company

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

What you will do

• Design, develop, and maintain performant and secure AI Platform services that power Copilot.
• Collaborate with platform, infrastructure, application engineers, and AI researchers to build next generation AI products and services.
• Ship high-quality and maintainable code, and ensure the reliability, scalability, and performance of platform components.
• Find a path to get things done despite roadblocks to get your work into the hands of users quickly and iteratively.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 6+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR equivalent experience.
• 4+ years’ experience building scalable platforms on public cloud infrastructure like Azure, AWS, or GCP with extensive use of technologies like Docker, Kubernetes, nginx, RDBMS, key-value stores, etc.
• 6+ years’ experience in building and releasing production software at the platform level.
• Solid knowledge of APIs, data flows, systems, and services.

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.
• Solid experience in designing and building scalable backend services, APIs, and distributed systems in cloud environments.
• Solid understanding of system design principles, including data modeling, caching strategies, and service-to-service communication (e.g., REST, gRPC).
• Ability to troubleshoot and resolve complex backend issues across multiple services, with a focus on reliability, performance, and scalability.
• Proficiency in writing clean, maintainable, and testable code, with a solid emphasis on code quality, observability, and security best practices.

Culture & Benefits

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