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 Commerce organization to architect and develop a large-scale data platform. This role focuses on transforming massive volumes of infrastructure telemetry, consumption, and revenue data into trusted, explainable insights for capacity planning and operational efficiency. You will own the architecture for data ingestion, processing, and modeling while designing reusable frameworks and canonical data models. Key responsibilities include establishing engineering patterns for streaming and batch processing, and developing AI-powered software engineering workflows using coding agents and retrieval-augmented generation. You will utilize technologies including Scala, Python, C#, Java, Apache Spark, Delta Lake, SQL, Microsoft Fabric, Azure Synapse, and Azure AI Foundry. The work involves solving complex problems regarding data freshness, cost optimization, and automated refactoring of legacy codebases.
What does a Software Engineer earn in Washington?
Median $202800 from 409 postings across 38 companies.
Architect highly scalable distributed data systems to process massive volumes of infrastructure telemetry and cloud consumption data.
Design reusable data processing frameworks, canonical data models, and data contracts for evolving business requirements.
Establish engineering patterns for incremental processing, late-arriving data, historical backfills, reconciliation, and schema evolution.
Lead architectural decisions for cloud data platforms, distributed compute engines, data lakes, and streaming/batch processing.
Deliver actionable insights using AI and advanced analytics to drive capacity planning and infrastructure optimization.
Design AI-powered software engineering workflows using coding agents and retrieval-augmented generation to accelerate system modernization.
Apply AI to analyze legacy codebases, automate refactoring, and improve test generation and code quality.
Establish governance and quality guardrails for AI-generated code, including automated testing and security reviews.
What we're looking for
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field.
6+ years of technical engineering experience coding in languages including Scala, Python, C#, or Java.
Must pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire and every two years thereafter.
Expertise in architecting and operating production-grade, cloud-native data platforms using Microsoft Fabric, Azure Synapse, or Azure AI Foundry (preferred).
Deep proficiency in Apache Spark, Delta Lake, distributed systems, SQL, or large-scale batch and streaming data processing (preferred).
Extensive experience in data modeling, analytical data systems, and SQL-based data analysis (preferred).
Practical experience applying AI coding assistants, LLMs, and agentic workflows to software development and engineering automation (preferred).
Proven ability to lead cross-team technical initiatives and influence architecture and engineering strategy (preferred).
Microsoft Fabric
Apache Spark
Python
C#
Java
C++
C
JavaScript
Azure SQL DB
Azure Cosmos DB
Azure PostgreSQL
Azure Data Factory
Azure Synapse Analytics
Azure Service Bus
Azure Event Grid
Power BI
Lakehouse
Distributed Systems
Monitoring and Observability
Video Coding
AV1
AV2
AVC
HEVC
VVC
Deep Learning
Computer Vision
C++
Python
gStreamer
Docker
REST APIs
XML
JSON
Git
GitHub
ABR Algorithms
Video Processing