Principal Software Engineer

Microsoft

Quick summary

Work type: On-site
Location: Redmond, WA
Salary: $142,800–$274,800 / yr
Posted: today
Closes: Dec 12, 2026
Nearby: 99+ roles within 25 mi

Market check

Salary context

Above market

How this pay compares to similar roles

Similar $181k

This role $209k

$101k most similar roles pay here $293k

This role pays more than 96% of similar roles. Most pay $155,000–$207,350 — the shaded band above. At the midpoint, this role pays about $209k versus about $181k for comparable roles.

Based on 238 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 1580 open roles on FindRole.

Listed pay typically runs $119,800–$234,700 across 1408 roles with salary data.

Most-posted roles

View all roles at Microsoft

At a glance

TL;DR · Principal Software Engineer

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Join our Microsoft AI – Copilot Discover team as a Principal Software Engineer, contributing to the backend platform that powers vertical content generation for services like weather, finance, and sports across global canvases such as Edge, MSN, and Windows. You will design and implement data ingestion, pre/post processing, caching, and serving pipelines, ensuring robust reliability and performance in highly distributed systems. Utilizing Azure or equivalent technologies on AWS and GCP, you’ll deploy ML/DL models, collaborate with cross-functional teams to translate business needs into technical solutions, and mentor peers while driving engineering excellence. Essential skills include experience with cloud storage, distributed task orchestration, large-scale data processing, and proficiency in languages like C#, .NET, Java, Go, or Node.js.

Skills

Azure Kubernetes AWS S3 GCP Cloud Storage Apache Kafka C# .NET Java Go Node.js CI/CD DevOps Terraform AAD certificates

What you'll do

Design and implement scalable backend services for AI model serving pipelines.
Develop data ingestion, pre/post processing, caching, and serving pipelines.
Deploy ML/DL models using containers and schedulers in cloud environments.
Ensure high reliability and performance of platform components and services.
Troubleshoot and resolve production issues to maintain service availability.
Provide technical leadership and mentorship to the engineering team.

What we're looking for

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or equivalent technical experience.
6+ years of coding experience in C#, .NET, Java, Go, Node.js, etc.
5+ years delivering and scaling multi-tiered distributed services.
5+ years improving service availability and robustness.
Extensive hands-on experience with cloud storage, task orchestration, and large-scale data processing.

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