below marketmost similar roles pay hereabove market
This role pays more than
62%
of similar roles. Most pay
$174,600–$231,000
— the blue band above.
At the midpoint, this role pays about
$209k
versus about
$203k
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
694 open roles
on FindRole.
Listed pay typically runs
$119,800–$234,700
across 651 roles with salary data.
The Principal Software Engineer - CoreAI joins the Azure AI Knowledge team to build the end-to-end Azure AI stack and PaaS infrastructure. This role focuses on developing advanced retrieval systems and knowledge services that power rich search experiences and serve as a foundation for large language models. You will lead the architecture, design, and delivery of large-scale cloud services, ensuring high availability, security, and performance across globally distributed infrastructure. Key responsibilities include building permission-aware retrieval systems, mentoring engineers, and managing live-site operations. Required skills include proficiency in languages such as C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python. The work addresses the technical challenge of blending large language models with external data to create reliable retrieval-augmented generation systems for enterprise applications.
What does a Software Engineer earn?
Median $197400 from 2576 postings across 150 companies.
Lead the architecture, design, implementation, and delivery of large-scale cloud services and AI-powered products.
Design and build secure, permission-aware retrieval and knowledge systems integrated with enterprise identity platforms.
Drive service scalability, reliability, and performance across globally distributed cloud infrastructure.
Own live-site operations, incident response, and root cause analysis while developing operational playbooks.
Mentor engineers through technical leadership, code reviews, and the promotion of engineering best practices.
Analyze production telemetry and customer feedback to improve performance, quality, and cost efficiency.
Contribute to the architecture of foundational services for AI agents and next-generation retrieval platforms.
Champion engineering excellence through automation, developer productivity investments, and security compliance.
What we're looking for
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field and 6+ 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 requirement.
Ability to meet Microsoft, customer, and/or government security screening requirements.
Ability to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire and every two years.
Experience designing and building large-scale distributed systems in a cloud environment (preferred).
Strong software engineering skills in C#, Java, C++, Rust, or a comparable language (preferred).
Experience with search technologies, information retrieval, ranking systems, vector databases, or recommendation systems (preferred).
Experience with AI/ML systems, LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), agent frameworks, or knowledge management platforms (preferred).
Azure AI
Python
C++
C#
Java
Go
JavaScript
C
Distributed Systems
Machine Learning
DevOps
Azure OpenAI
Azure ML
Software Architecture
Telemetry
Observability
Python
C++
C#
Java
Go
C
JavaScript
Distributed Systems
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Cloud Services
System Design
Observability
Scalability
Security
Privacy
Compliance
Python
C++
Java
C#
JavaScript
vLLM
SGLang
Ray
VERL
Slime
GPU Computing
Distributed Training
ML Systems
AI Infrastructure
Data Analytics
Disaggregated Inference
Reinforcement Learning
Azure SQL
SQL
C#
Python
Java
C++
C
JavaScript
Distributed Systems
SRE
Schema Design
Data Migration
Performance Tuning
Capacity Planning
geo‑replication
Failover Groups
Root Cause Analysis
Telemetry
Automation