As a Principal Software Engineer on Microsoft AI’s Copilot Discover Engineering Team, you will serve as a senior technical architect responsible for setting the architectural vision and driving long-range strategy for the Copilot Discover platform. Your day-to-day involves designing systems that ingest, enrich, rank, personalize, and serve content across various surfaces, ensuring robustness, scalability, and privacy compliance. You will work closely with product, design, data science, and engineering teams to translate business needs into technical roadmaps, establish architectural principles, and ensure operational excellence through CI/CD practices and monitoring. Key skills include experience in large-scale distributed systems, ML/AI for content understanding and personalization, and cross-organizational collaboration. This role requires a deep understanding of system architecture, performance tuning, and the ability to influence technical direction across multiple teams and organizations.
Own the technical direction for Copilot Discover platforms, setting end-to-end architectural strategy.
Set and govern architectural decisions across multiple services and teams, ensuring systems are scalable and secure.
Shape the adoption of AI/ML techniques for content understanding, personalization, summarization, and safety.
Establish and evolve quality and reliability standards, including test strategies and monitoring practices.
Serve as a cross-organizational technical leader, aligning MSN architecture with other Microsoft platforms.
What we're looking for
Extensive experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems.
Proven track record as a technical lead or architect influencing across teams.
Deep expertise in ML/AI systems, particularly content understanding and personalization.
Strong background in system architecture, performance tuning, and operational excellence.
Experience with technologies like Apache Spark, Kafka, and columnar storage.
Excellent analytical and communication skills for complex technical concepts.
Solid cross-organizational collaboration and senior stakeholder influence.
Market check
Salary context
This
$163,000–$296,400
range sits above
84%
of similar postings on FindRole.
Peer median band
$139,900–$257,000
Median floor and ceiling across peers.
Typical midpoint (25–75%)
$177,250–$214,500
Middle half of comparable postings.
Based on 240 comparable postings.*
* 240 is the maximum number of comparable postings sampled.
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
534 open roles
on FindRole.
Listed pay typically runs
$119,800–$234,700
across 488 roles with salary data.