This role pays more than
65%
of similar roles. Most pay
$178,300–$216,300
— the shaded band above.
At the midpoint, this role pays about
$209k
versus about
$197k
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
608 open roles
on FindRole.
Listed pay typically runs
$119,800–$234,700
across 572 roles with salary data.
The Principal SWE Lead joins the Customer Service & Support organization to lead the architecture, development, and production deployment of agentic AI solutions. This hands-on technical leadership role involves building diagnostic experiences, orchestration workflows, and evaluation frameworks to transform support interactions into secure, reliable, and scalable systems. The successful candidate will design engineering strategies, conduct code reviews, and integrate AI solutions with existing support systems, APIs, and telemetry. Key responsibilities include managing multi-agent coordination, retrieval-augmented generation, and prompt engineering while ensuring compliance with safety and reliability standards. Required skills include proficiency in languages such as C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python, along with experience in distributed systems, cloud services, and tools like Azure AI Foundry or Copilot Studio. The role solves complex problems in automated service operations and workflow automation for enterprise-scale support environments.
Architect and build production-grade agentic AI solutions, orchestration workflows, and diagnostic experiences for support systems.
Set technical direction by defining architecture, engineering strategies, and reusable patterns for scalable AI systems.
Develop critical code components while conducting design reviews and resolving complex architectural issues.
Integrate AI solutions with internal APIs, knowledge sources, and telemetry while ensuring secure data handling.
Solve advanced problems in agent orchestration, including state management, tool use, and retrieval-augmented generation.
Establish robust evaluation frameworks to test prompt accuracy, model groundedness, and system reliability.
Deploy and operate AI services in cloud environments following strict security, privacy, and compliance requirements.
Mentor engineers and establish technical standards to improve team execution and knowledge sharing.
What we're looking for
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field and 6+ years of engineering experience with coding in languages like C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python.
Ability to pass the Microsoft Cloud Background Check and meet other required security screening requirements.
Experience building applied AI systems, including generative AI, large language models, or autonomous agents (preferred).
10+ years of professional software design and development experience for complex production systems (preferred).
Experience designing, building, deploying, and operating highly available, secure, and scalable cloud services (preferred).
Proficiency in modern programming languages to contribute directly to production code, with Python being highly relevant (preferred).
Expertise in distributed systems, APIs, data platforms, observability, testing, and production operations (preferred).
Experience with Azure AI Foundry, Copilot Studio, Power Platform, or comparable enterprise AI and cloud platforms (preferred).
Generative AI
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
Python
Go
C++
C#
Java
JavaScript
Distributed Systems
RBAC
Observability
Multi-agent Systems
Semantic Search