below marketmost similar roles pay hereabove market
This role pays more than
68%
of similar roles. Most pay
$169,550–$220,800
— the blue band above.
At the midpoint, this role pays about
$209k
versus about
$195k
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 joins the Agent 365 Security team to build the infrastructure and services required to securely govern AI agents across enterprise environments. This role involves leading the architecture and design of scalable AI infrastructure, defining end-to-end strategies for security, policy, and tool governance, and solving complex distributed-system problems. You will work across the full stack, balancing front-end and back-end engineering to create performant user experiences and scalable services. The position requires proficiency in coding languages such as C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python. Key responsibilities include establishing engineering patterns, mentoring engineers, and managing data acquisition strategies. You will address the technical challenges of reasoning, planning, and autonomous actions in AI agents while ensuring reliability, observability, and security at scale.
What does a Software Engineer earn?
Median $197400 from 2576 postings across 150 companies.
Lead the architecture and design of scalable AI infrastructure and large-scale systems.
Define end-to-end architecture for Agent Security, Policy, and Tool Governance.
Establish technical strategies and engineering frameworks for experimentation and evaluation.
Lead data acquisition and evaluation-data strategies to ensure high data quality and governance.
Partner with product leaders to define datasets, evaluation methodologies, and success criteria.
Drive architectural alignment and influence engineering investments across multiple teams.
Identify and resolve systemic technical risks to improve scalability, reliability, and security.
Mentor engineers and provide technical leadership to raise overall engineering quality.
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 (or equivalent experience).
Ability to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire and every two years thereafter.
Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field and 8+ years of technical engineering experience with coding in languages like C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python (preferred).
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field and 12+ years of technical engineering experience with coding in languages like C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python (preferred).
Hands-on experience building and delivering LLM-powered applications or agents that use tools and execute multi-step workflows (preferred).
Solid software engineering fundamentals including hands-on coding, debugging, automated testing, and sound judgment regarding abstractions and maintainability (preferred).
Experience designing and operating distributed systems or cloud services including state management, observability, security, and reliability (preferred).
Demonstrated principal-level technical leadership, experience building security for AI solutions, and experience shaping architecture and mentoring engineers (preferred).