This role pays more than
75%
of similar roles. Most pay
$180,281–$232,850
— the shaded band above.
At the midpoint, this role pays about
$231k
versus about
$207k
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
686 open roles
on FindRole.
Listed pay typically runs
$119,800–$234,700
across 666 roles with salary data.
Principal Software Engineer - Systems and Infrastructure joins the AI Infrastructure Engineering Systems team to build cloud platforms, engineering infrastructure, and developer systems for large-scale AI services. This role involves providing technical leadership for complex products by owning system architecture, establishing engineering standards, and mentoring leaders while translating ambiguous requirements into scalable solutions. You will develop foundational capabilities in data storage, graph infrastructure, analytics, stream processing, and service lifecycle management to improve the performance of model inference and other large-scale AI workloads. The role requires expertise in C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python, with a focus on distributed systems, query execution, indexing, concurrency, and distributed algorithms. You will navigate complex infrastructure challenges, influence open-source projects, and ensure security and reliability across the product landscape to solve critical problems in AI workload deployment and management.
What does a Software Engineer earn?
Median $196750 from 2011 postings across 148 companies.
Own the architecture of complex products while aligning technical decisions with business outcomes and long-term goals.
Drive large-scale initiatives from initial problem discovery through design, implementation, and production deployment.
Design platform-first tools and extensible code that meet performance, scalability, security, and cost requirements.
Establish company-wide standards for coding, testing, architecture, and operations while mentoring other technical leaders.
Act as a technical authority for cross-product debugging, telemetry, incident management, and automated repair actions.
Negotiate dependencies and trade-offs with stakeholders to execute a long-term vision for core infrastructure.
Influence open-source projects and industry practices while evaluating emerging technologies for the organization.
Optimize the performance, efficiency, and reliability of large-scale AI workloads and model inference.
What we're looking for
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field and 8+ years of technical engineering experience with coding in languages like C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python.
Ability to pass Microsoft background and Microsoft Cloud background checks.
Master's Degree in Computer Science or related field and 12+ years of technical engineering experience (preferred).
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field and 15+ years of technical engineering experience (preferred).
Experience providing architecture and technical leadership for large-scale distributed systems, databases, analytics systems, or platform products (preferred).
Experience aligning technical decisions with business outcomes and influencing cross-functional teams and senior leadership (preferred).
Experience developing systems using Java, C++, or Rust applying concepts like query execution, indexing, concurrency, and distributed algorithms (preferred).
Familiarity with AI/ML infrastructure concepts such as model inference, GPU computing, or distributed training (preferred).
Distributed Systems
Python
C++
C#
Java
JavaScript
Container Orchestration
Data Infrastructure
Storage Systems
Streaming Platforms
Network Infrastructure
Observability
Telemetry
open-source
Model Inference
GPU Computing
Distributed Training
React
Azure Functions
Microsoft Teams
GitHub
Azure AI Foundry
Python
C#
JavaScript
C++
C
CI/CD
Azure DevOps
Agent Orchestration
Infrastructure as Code
Retrieval Patterns
Application Insights
Key Vault
Managed Identity