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Principal Software Engineer

Microsoft · Redmond, WA, US · Hillsboro, OR, US · Mountain View, CA, US · Austin, TX, US · Raleigh, NC, US

Spotted 62d ago

Job details

Pay
$142,800 – $274,800 a year
Level
Staff / principal
Experience
6+ years
Education
Bachelor's degree
Posted
Aug 28, 2026
Last confirmed open
Oct 28, 2026

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Job description

About this role

Overview Microsoft Silicon, Cloud Hardware, and Infrastructure Engineering (SCHIE) is the team behind Microsoft’s expanding Cloud Infrastructure and responsible for powering Microsoft’s “Intelligent Cloud” mission.

SCHIE delivers the core infrastructure and foundational technologies for Microsoft's over 200 online businesses including Bing, MSN, Office 365, Xbox Live, Teams, OneDrive, and the Microsoft Azure platform globally with our server and data center infrastructure, security and compliance, operations, globalization, and manageability solutions.

Our focus is on smart growth, high efficiency, and deliver trusted experience to customers and partners worldwide and we are looking for passionate engineers to help achieve that mission.

To achieve this goal, we in the Hardware Health Service team within Azure are responsible for the design, implementation, and operation of global scalable cloud services to monitor the fleet’s hardware health and predict anomalies and pending failures.

We focus on delivering the solutions required for our cloud service platforms at the lowest possible cost of ownership (TCO) and providing great customer experience on unreliable hardware.

Azure Hardware Health Service is looking for a Principal Software Engineer to be a part of the fast-paced and exciting business of Azure. This is your chance to be part of the most exciting end-to-end teams within Microsoft.

We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer with experience in cloud service development to come help us develop and light up innovative solutions that powers Azure and make our world-class cloud infrastructure even better.

Responsibilities

  • Develop and operate large scale, low latency, and high throughput systems.
  • Evaluate AI technologies (such as LLMs, SLMs, embeddings) and architectures (such as orchestration patterns, RAG, etc) when developing solutions targeting firmware/hardware improvement.
  • Specify or implement AI platform improvements like fine-tuning or training custom ML models.
  • Drive the continuous improvement process based on Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and identified opportunities.
  • Contributes to data analysis and feedback integration for product engineering decisions, acting as a Designated Responsible Individual (DRI) for monitoring and restoring system functionality within Service Level Agreement (SLA) timeframe.
  • Participates in live service operations, and supports telemetry data integration for system behavior insights, with a focus on performance, reliability, and safety.
  • Supports the identification of dependencies and design documentation for product features, learns about system interactions and back-end dependencies, and contributes to architectural processes under guidance.
  • Produces code to test hypotheses for technical solutions and assist with technical validation efforts.
  • Collaborates on quality assurance plans, augments test cases, and integrates automation into testing, while understanding the implications of security and compliance in system architecture.
  • Ensures compliance with security, privacy, safety, and accessibility standards, leverages developer tools for code creation and debugging, contributes to automation in production and deployment, and proactively seeks knowledge to improve product availability, reliability, efficiency, and performance at scale.
  • Define and measure the success/impact of requested analytics & reporting features via quantitative measures.

Minimum Qualifications

  • 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.

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

  • Develop and operate large scale, low latency, and high throughput systems.
  • Evaluate AI technologies (such as LLMs, SLMs, embeddings) and architectures (such as orchestration patterns, RAG, etc) when developing solutions targeting firmware/hardware improvement.
  • Specify or implement AI platform improvements like fine-tuning or training custom ML models.
  • Drive the continuous improvement process based on Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and identified opportunities.
  • Contributes to data analysis and feedback integration for product engineering decisions, acting as a Designated Responsible Individual (DRI) for monitoring and restoring system functionality within Service Level Agreement (SLA) timeframe.
  • Participates in live service operations, and supports telemetry data integration for system behavior insights, with a focus on performance, reliability, and safety.
  • Supports the identification of dependencies and design documentation for product features, learns about system interactions and back-end dependencies, and contributes to architectural processes under guidance.
  • Produces code to test hypotheses for technical solutions and assist with technical validation efforts.
  • Collaborates on quality assurance plans, augments test cases, and integrates automation into testing, while understanding the implications of security and compliance in system architecture.
  • Ensures compliance with security, privacy, safety, and accessibility standards, leverages developer tools for code creation and debugging, contributes to automation in production and deployment, and proactively seeks knowledge to improve product availability, reliability, efficiency, and performance at scale.
  • Define and measure the success/impact of requested analytics & reporting features via quantitative measures.

#Azure #CHIE #HHS

Software Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $274,800 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $188,000 - $304,200 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:

https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances.

If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.

Interested in this role?Continue on Microsoft's careers page.
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