Principal Security Engineer

Microsoft

Confirmed live yesterday High trust

Hybrid

Quick summary

Work type: Hybrid
Location: —
Salary: $142,800–$274,800 / yr
Posted: 7 days ago
Freshness: Confirmed live yesterday
Closes: Mar 15, 2027

Market check

Salary context

Above market

How this pay compares to similar roles

Similar $186k

This role $209k

$127k most similar roles pay here $291k

This role pays more than 72% of similar roles. Most pay $159,000–$213,725 — the shaded band above. At the midpoint, this role pays about $209k versus about $186k for comparable roles.

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 588 open roles on FindRole.

Listed pay typically runs $119,800–$234,700 across 570 roles with salary data.

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At a glance

TL;DR · Principal Security Engineer

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As a Principal Security Engineer on the Offensive Research & Security Engineering team, you will protect operating systems, cloud platforms, and virtualization technologies. You will work across the discovery and mitigation of security vulnerabilities by identifying system weaknesses and driving protections to improve platform security at scale. Your daily responsibilities include performing design reviews, code reviews, fuzzing, and variant analysis while developing mitigations against entire classes of vulnerabilities. You will advocate for secure engineering practices, develop scaling security tooling, and provide technical leadership through mentoring and problem decomposition. The role requires expertise in operating system security fundamentals, including kernel or low-level components. Preferred skills include experience with reverse engineering, exploit development, memory safety protections, sandboxing, and platform hardening using systems programming languages such as C, C++, or Rust to address complex security initiatives.

What does a Security Engineer earn?

Median $192000 from 80 postings across 39 companies.

See salary data

Skills

Vulnerability Research Code Review Fuzzing Reverse Engineering Exploit Development C C++ Rust Memory Safety Sandboxing Platform Hardening Windows Azure Security Tooling

What you'll do

Identify and analyze security vulnerabilities through design review, code review, fuzzing, and variant analysis.
Develop and implement mitigations that reduce risk across operating systems and platform components.
Influence engineering teams to integrate security into the development lifecycle and improve design decisions.
Create and scale security tooling, detection capabilities, and advanced analysis techniques.
Translate technical security findings into systemic improvements and measurable outcomes across organizations.
Monitor attacker techniques and emerging vulnerability classes to improve Microsoft's overall security posture.
Provide technical leadership by decomposing complex problems and mentoring peers on best practices.

What we're looking for

Master's degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, or related field and 4+ years of experience in security.
Bachelor's degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, or related field and 6+ years of experience in security.
Equivalent experience to the specified degree and experience requirements is acceptable.
Ability to pass Microsoft Cloud Background Check and other required government security screenings.
Public or internal track record of relevant security research (preferred).
Understanding of operating system security fundamentals, including kernel or low-level platform components (preferred).
Experience in vulnerability research, code review, fuzzing, reverse engineering, or exploit development (preferred).
4+ years experience in security-related software engineering and 4+ years with systems programming languages like C, C++, or Rust (preferred).

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