Principal Software Engineer | Microsoft Careers

Microsoft

Quick summary

Work type: On-site
Location: Redmond, WA
Salary: $142,800–$274,800 / yr
Posted: 3 days ago
Closes: Dec 9, 2026
Nearby: 99+ roles within 25 mi

Market check

Salary context

Above market

How this pay compares to similar roles

Similar $188k

This role $209k

$124k most similar roles pay here $291k

This role pays more than 78% of similar roles. Most pay $167,100–$208,800 — the shaded band above. At the midpoint, this role pays about $209k versus about $188k for comparable roles.

Based on 239 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.

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At a glance

TL;DR · Principal Software Engineer | Microsoft Careers

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As a Principal Software Engineer on the M365 Evaluation Platform Team, you will play a pivotal role in enhancing Microsoft’s AI evaluation system, ensuring it supports agile development cycles for both internal builders and third-party partners. Your daily responsibilities include developing tools that streamline model fine-tuning, feature launches, metric integration, partner onboarding, user feedback analysis, and query set creation. You will focus on creating friendly, reliable, and scalable infrastructure to accelerate learning and improve performance understanding through automation. Key skills required are technical leadership in evaluation systems, experience with distributed systems or development platforms, a passion for building robust infrastructure, and the ability to operate effectively in dynamic environments. This role demands expertise in platform engineering practices such as reusable component creation, time-to-launch reduction, improved debuggability, and comprehensive documentation.

Skills

Python Docker Kubernetes CI/CD PostgreSQL Azure AWS GitHub GitLab Jenkins Prometheus Grafana M365 RESTful APIs Swagger/OpenAPI JSON YAML Linux DevOps

What you'll do

Design tools to enable agile evaluation processes for AI models.
Develop continuous evaluation capabilities throughout the development lifecycle.
Automate tasks to enhance understanding of system performance metrics.
Build reliable and scalable infrastructure for user success.
Create well-documented tooling to support various user journeys.
Drive quality improvements in products using data-driven engineering decisions.

What we're looking for

Demonstrated technical leadership in evaluation, distributed systems, or development platforms.
Experience building systems to evaluate product quality using data-driven decisions.
Passion for creating reliable, scalable infrastructure to support user success.
Ability to operate effectively in a dynamic environment with initiative and clarity.
Self-motivated approach with strong ownership and accountability for outcomes.
Solid platform engineering mindset focusing on reusable components and documentation.

Principal Software Engineer | Microsoft Careers

Microsoft

Redmond, WA 55 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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