Principal Software Engineer | Microsoft Careers

Microsoft

Hybrid

Quick summary

Work type: Hybrid
Location: —
Salary: $165,600–$296,400 / yr
Posted: 4 days ago
Closes: Nov 28, 2026

Market check

Salary context

Above market

How this pay compares to similar roles

Similar $193k

This role $231k

$121k most similar roles pay here $315k

This role pays more than 91% of similar roles. Most pay $174,200–$211,200 — the shaded band above. At the midpoint, this role pays about $231k versus about $193k 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 728 open roles on FindRole.

Listed pay typically runs $119,800–$234,700 across 664 roles with salary data.

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View all roles at Microsoft

At a glance

TL;DR · Principal Software Engineer | Microsoft Careers

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As a Principal Software Engineer on the Microsoft Content team, you will lead the technical direction for large-scale content platforms used by over 1 billion users across various products. Your responsibilities include shaping multi-year technical strategies, driving architectural coherence, and building systems that serve as foundational platforms with strict requirements for availability, latency, security, and cost efficiency. You will guide the integration of LLM-powered capabilities into production systems, ensuring they are reliable and scalable components of the platform. This role requires expertise in backend systems, cloud-native architecture, and service-oriented design, along with a track record of delivering large-scale distributed systems used by millions of users. You must be adept at operating in ambiguous spaces, influencing across teams, and fostering engineering excellence and talent development within a highly innovative culture.

Skills

Azure Kubernetes Docker Python Go Java SQL NoSQL CI/CD Prometheus Grafana Git GitHub Terraform AWS Google Cloud Microservices Service-Oriented Architecture LLM Responsible AI DevOps

What you'll do

Define and drive long-term technical strategy for large-scale distributed systems across multiple teams.
Lead the design of cohesive platforms integrating services, data, and AI capabilities at global scale.
Ensure backend systems meet strict requirements for availability, latency, security, and cost efficiency.
Guide integration of LLM-powered features into production systems with responsible AI practices.
Influence technical direction and drive alignment between engineering, product, and applied science teams.

What we're looking for

Proven track record of architecting large-scale distributed systems used by millions of users.
Deep expertise in backend systems, cloud-native architecture, and microservices-based design.
Experience owning and evolving production systems with high availability and low latency requirements.
Solid fundamentals in system design, distributed systems, data modeling, and performance optimization.
Demonstrated ability to drive technical strategy and influence across multiple teams or organizations.
Experience leading complex, ambiguous, and high-impact technical initiatives end-to-end.

Principal Software Engineer | Microsoft Careers

Microsoft

Redmond, WA 45 days ago $139,900–$274,800

C# .NET OAuth2 OIDC Distributed Systems High-Performance Runtime Engines Policy/Rules Engines Identity Platforms ESTS Messaging Protocols Zero Trust Principles CI/CD Terraform Azure Kubernetes Prometheus Grafana

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