below marketmost similar roles pay hereabove market
This role pays more than
66%
of similar roles. Most pay
$173,737–$221,850
— the blue band above.
At the midpoint, this role pays about
$209k
versus about
$198k
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
648 open roles
on FindRole.
Listed pay typically runs
$119,800–$234,700
across 624 roles with salary data.
The Principal Software Engineer joins the Contact Center AI team to build a conversational AI runtime powering intelligent, agentic customer engagement across chat, digital channels, and real-time voice. You will set the technical direction for services within the Microsoft Copilot Studio runtime, architecting production-grade systems for agent orchestration, planning, grounding, and multi-agent coordination. Key responsibilities include pioneering low-latency speech-to-speech experiences with natural turn-taking and building scalable backend services using event-driven, CQRS, and service mesh patterns. You will utilize C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python to develop high-throughput APIs and manage the full service lifecycle. The role solves complex problems in transforming foundation models into dependable customer outcomes by integrating secure tool execution, knowledge retrieval, and dynamic evaluation systems into an enterprise-grade service.
What does a Software Engineer earn?
Median $196750 from 2601 postings across 154 companies.
Design, architect, and ship production-grade agentic systems across the full software stack.
Set the technical direction for agent orchestration, planning, grounding, memory, and multi-agent coordination.
Develop low-latency, real-time voice agents with natural speech-to-speech turn-taking and interruption handling.
Build scalable backend services using event-driven, CQRS, and service mesh patterns with high-throughput APIs.
Manage the full service lifecycle including CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, and SLA-driven reliability.
Embed fairness, safety, privacy, and grounding into all AI products to champion Responsible AI.
Optimize systems for latency, throughput, and cost at an enterprise scale.
What we're looking for
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field and 6+ years of technical engineering experience in languages like C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python (or equivalent experience).
Ability to meet Microsoft, customer, and/or government security screening requirements, including a Microsoft Cloud Background Check.
Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field and 8+ years of technical engineering experience (preferred).
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field and 12+ years of technical engineering experience (preferred).
Experience with cloud technologies, specifically Azure (preferred).
Hands-on experience with agent frameworks, LLM orchestration, RAG, tool/function calling, and prompt/grounding strategies (preferred).
Experience with Microsoft Copilot Studio architecture, conversational platforms, or agent runtimes (preferred).
Real-time voice or speech experience, including ASR/TTS, telephony/media pipelines, or low-latency streaming (preferred).
Microsoft Azure
Python
C#
Java
C++
JavaScript
C
Spark
Kafka
Airflow
LLM Orchestration
Distributed Systems
Data Pipelines
Observability
Telemetry
Distributed Tracing
Big Data
Streaming Pipelines
Azure
Python
C#
Java
C++
JavaScript
C
LLM Orchestration
RAG
REST
gRPC
CI/CD
Infrastructure as Code
Service Mesh
ASR
TTS
Speech-to-Speech
Microsoft Copilot Studio
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