Principal Site Reliability Engineer

Microsoft

Confirmed live 2 days ago High trust

Quick summary

Work type
On-site
Location
Redmond, WA
Salary
$142,800–$274,800 / yr
Posted
95 days ago
Freshness
Confirmed live 2 days ago
Closes
Dec 5, 2026

Market check

Salary context

Above market

How this pay compares to similar roles

Similar $187k
This role $209k
$127k most similar roles pay here $291k

This role pays more than 72% of similar roles. Most pay $159,737–$214,000 — the shaded band above. At the midpoint, this role pays about $209k versus about $187k 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 598 open roles on FindRole.

Listed pay typically runs $119,800–$234,700 across 586 roles with salary data.

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View all roles at Microsoft

At a glance

TL;DR · Principal Site Reliability Engineer

As a Principal Site Reliability Engineer on the Substrate team, you will set technical and operational direction for reliability across critical cloud infrastructure. You will be responsible for defining reliability strategies, SLO frameworks, and engineering standards while leading complex multi-year initiatives to ensure high availability and security. Your daily work involves serving as an actively engaged senior on-call engineer, providing hands-on leadership during high-impact incidents, and conducting post-incident reviews to drive systemic improvements. You will architect large-scale automation, observability, and self-healing solutions while mentoring other engineers. The role requires expertise in software engineering, network engineering, or systems administration to manage workloads in regulated, sovereign, or compliance-sensitive environments. You will solve complex problems related to infrastructure for services requiring high security and reliability within specialized government cloud environments.

What does a Site Reliability Engineer earn?

Median $186200 from 131 postings across 36 companies.

See salary data

What you'll do

  • Define and drive reliability strategy, SLO frameworks, and operational best practices for workloads in regulated environments.
  • Lead incident response and provide technical direction during complex or high-impact service outages.
  • Conduct post-incident reviews to implement durable, systemic engineering improvements across multiple teams.
  • Architect and deliver large-scale automation, observability, and self-healing solutions.
  • Establish software engineering standards that integrate reliability, security, and compliance into service designs.
  • Influence architectural decisions and engineering practices across various organizational boundaries.
  • Mentor senior engineers and define the long-term technical direction of the SRE discipline.

What we're looking for

  • A Doctorate degree and 2+ years of experience in software engineering, network engineering, or systems administration are required.
  • A Master's degree and 3+ years of experience in software engineering, network engineering, or systems administration are required.
  • A Bachelor's degree and 5+ years of experience in software engineering, network engineering, or systems administration are required.
  • Equivalent experience to the specified educational and experience combinations is accepted.
  • Candidates must be eligible to obtain and maintain a Tier 3 background investigation for GCCH and DoD environments.
  • Candidates must be able to meet Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) eligibility requirements.
  • Preferred candidates have 7+ years of experience with large-scale cloud or distributed systems.
  • Security Clearance Requirements.

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