below marketmost similar roles pay hereabove market
This role pays more than
65%
of similar roles. Most pay
$169,550–$220,800
— the blue band above.
At the midpoint, this role pays about
$209k
versus about
$195k
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
694 open roles
on FindRole.
Listed pay typically runs
$119,800–$234,700
across 651 roles with salary data.
The Principal Software Engineering Manager leads and develops a globally distributed team of software engineers to build a self-service platform for reusable automated tests. This role involves defining the vision, architecture, and roadmap for systems that validate sensor and telemetry health while managing execution infrastructure, reliability, and security. The manager translates operational risks into scalable platform capabilities, ensuring high availability and cost efficiency for large volumes of telemetry. Key responsibilities include driving engineering fundamentals like CI/CD, design reviews, and incident response while reporting against SLIs, SLOs, and OKRs. Candidates must possess experience with C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python, alongside cloud technologies like Azure Kubernetes Service, Azure Functions, and Grafana. The work focuses on telemetry pipelines, anomaly detection, and data-quality monitoring for large-scale datacenter environments.
What does a Software Engineering Manager earn?
Median $214394 from 123 postings across 39 companies.
Lead and develop a globally distributed team of software engineers through hiring, coaching, and career development.
Define the vision, architecture, roadmap, and execution strategy for a self-service automated testing platform.
Translate operational risks and telemetry requirements into scalable platform capabilities across engineering and product teams.
Drive architectural decisions for highly available services that process large volumes of telemetry with low latency.
Define and report on platform outcomes using SLIs, SLOs, error budgets, and OKRs to measure reliability and adoption.
Establish mechanisms to improve telemetry quality, including monitoring for telemetry loss, stale values, and false positives.
Enforce engineering fundamentals including design reviews, CI/CD, secure development, and incident response.
Manage complex cross-organizational execution by resolving ambiguity and managing dependencies across various departments.
What we're looking for
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field and 6+ years of technical engineering experience with coding in C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python.
Master's Degree in Computer Science or related field and 8+ years of technical engineering experience with coding in C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python.
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field and 12+ years of technical engineering experience with coding in C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python.
Equivalent experience to the above degree and years of experience requirements.
4+ years of people-management experience, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and career development.
Experience leading the design, development, and operation of production software platforms, distributed systems, cloud services, developer platforms, or site reliability engineering solutions.
Experience building test frameworks, validation platforms, or self-service systems that enable teams to author, deploy, and operate automated tests at scale.
Experience with telemetry pipelines, time-series data, sensor validation, anomaly detection, or data-quality monitoring.
Experience designing and operating highly available cloud services using SLIs, SLOs, error budgets, capacity planning, observability, and incident-management practices.
Experience with modern software engineering and DevOps practices, including Git, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, and secure development.
Production experience with cloud-scale data, compute, monitoring, and visualization technologies such as Azure Data Explorer, Azure Monitor, Event Hubs, Azure Functions, AKS, Power BI, or Grafana.
Experience with or understanding of datacenter infrastructure and operations, including critical-environment systems, telemetry, and monitoring.
Verification of United States citizenship is required due to legal restrictions.
Azure
C#
Python
Java
C++
C
JavaScript
Kubernetes
CI/CD
Bicep
ARM
Infrastructure as Code
Distributed Services
Observability
Production Troubleshooting
Deployment Automation