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This role pays less than
52%
of similar roles. Most pay
$195,950–$275,586
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At the midpoint, this role pays about
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versus about
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Based on 240 similar postings.
Employer
About Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is a global technology leader producing software, hardware, and cloud services including Windows, Office 365, Azure cloud platform, Xbox gaming, and Surface devices. Industry: Software & Cloud Computing
Microsoft currently has
661 open roles
on FindRole.
Listed pay typically runs
$119,800–$234,700
across 633 roles with salary data.
JOB TITLE: Principal AI Engineering Manager
The Principal AI Engineering Manager joins the Azure Engineering Operations team to lead a high-performing AI engineering pod. This role involves building and managing a team of Applied AI Engineers to develop domain-specific agents and services that transform Azure customer support from human-only workflows into AI-first systems. Key responsibilities include owning the end-to-end engineering execution for production agentic AI services, including LLM orchestration, multi-agent coordination, RAG-based systems, and evaluation frameworks. The manager will set technical standards for C# and Python development using TDD, CI/CD, and observability. The role addresses the technical challenge of resolving customer issues at scale by automating support patterns, ensuring responsible AI compliance, and establishing rubrics and golden datasets to validate agent correctness and safety.
Hire, coach, and develop a high-performing pod of Applied AI Engineers to ship production agentic AI services.
Drive the end-to-end engineering lifecycle for AI agents, including LLM orchestration, multi-agent workflows, and RAG pipelines.
Define architecture patterns, code quality standards, and observability requirements for production-quality C# and Python systems.
Establish evaluation frameworks using rubrics and golden datasets to validate agent correctness and safety before deployment.
Own production health by driving incident response, root cause analysis, and continuous reliability improvements for agent systems.
Partner with product and platform teams to translate customer support patterns into engineering priorities and roadmap goals.
Track and achieve KPIs related to case volume reduction, automation accuracy, and customer satisfaction.
Embed responsible AI practices, PII protection, and audit trails into all agent system architectures.
What we're looking for
Master's Degree in Computer Science or related field and 8+ years of technical engineering experience with coding in languages like C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python.
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field and 12+ years of technical engineering experience with coding in languages like C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python.
Equivalent experience to the degree and years of experience requirements.
8+ years in software engineering or applied AI roles, with 3+ years in people management leading technical engineering teams (preferred).
Strong proficiency in Python and C# with hands-on experience building production AI/ML systems (preferred).
Experience with LLM-based systems, including prompt engineering, RAG architectures, or agent frameworks (preferred).
Experience with cloud platforms (Azure) and cloud-native service development (microservices, containers, CI/CD) (preferred).
Ability to pass the Microsoft Cloud Background Check (required).
Python
C#
Azure
LLM
RAG
Agentic AI
Azure AI Foundry
Azure OpenAI
CI/CD
Prompt Engineering
Microservices
Cosmos DB
RBAC
Managed Identities
System Design
Data Structures
Algorithms
C++
Java
JavaScript
Python
C#
Java
C++
JavaScript
Generative AI
Large Language Models
Agentic AI
Azure AI Foundry
Copilot Studio
Power Platform
Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Prompt Engineering
Distributed Systems
APIs
Observability
Data Governance