Senior Software Engineer (AI) - Planner

Overview

Microsoft’s Path team helps customers along their journey from the initial idea to the final realization of their goals – from Idea to Plan to Done.

We are responsible for collaborative work management products including Microsoft Project, Planner, To Do, and Visio. With Project and Planner, we help customers collaborate effectively to navigate complexity, determine critical paths, and orchestrate their plans to achieve more. With To Do and Tasks, we help customers capture, prioritize, and complete their aspirations and goals along their path to success. And with Visio, we help customers model and conceptualize information pathways that flow through process diagrams, organizational charts, and more to visualize what is and what can be. Collectively, we're responsible for an incredible portfolio of products and services that help guide people and organizations along their journey to achieve more.

As a Senior Software Engineer on the Path team, you won’t just be building software—you’ll be transforming how people work, plan, and collaborate every single day. You’ll be modernizing work management with AI, pioneering next-generation Large Language Models (LLMs) and advanced Agentic frameworks that supercharge productivity. From leveraging cutting-edge AI agents to automate repetitive tasks, to creating intelligent assistants that streamline project workflows and proactively complete tasks, you’ll be at the heart of an exciting global effort—redefining how people everywhere get things done.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

Responsibilities

AI-Native Development

• Independently uses appropriate artificial intelligence (AI) tools and practices across the software development lifecycle (SDLC) in a disciplined manner. Takes responsibility for the content of their AI-generated requirements, design documents, code, and other assets, assisting other members of the team to do the same. Uses SDLC and engineering health measures (e.g., Accelerate, SPACE framework, Engineering System Success Playbook [ESSP]) to improve processes and practices, especially those involving AI. Experiments with AI tools and practices to improve their own capabilities.

Coding

• Reviews product code and test code to ensure it meets team standards, contains the correct test coverage, and is appropriate for the product or solution area. Brings insight to code reviews to help improve code quality, coaching and providing feedback to develop other engineers' skills. Conducts code reviews in a timely fashion that helps accelerate the pace of development on the team. Considers diagnosability, reliability, testability, and maintainability when reviewing code, and understands when code is ready to be shared or delivered. Applies and reviews for coding patterns, security risks, compliance issues, and best practices in code reviews, providing feedback on code to drive adherence to best practices. Uses automated source code analysis tools that are incorporated into the build/development process.
• Uses debugging tools, tests, logs, telemetry, and other methods to proactively verify assumptions while developing code before issues occur for products in production. Conducts incident retrospectives to identify root causes of problems, implements repair actions, and identifies mechanisms to prevent incident recurrence. Independently applies least-access principles, uses logging, telemetry, and other appropriate mechanisms to investigate issues while retaining privacy and security, and drives those practices across the team.
• Leads by example within the team to produce extensible, maintainable, well-tested, secure, and performant code that adheres to design specifications. Continuously improves code performance, testability, maintainability, effectiveness, and cost, while learning about and accounting for relevant trade-offs. Applies metrics to drive code quality and stability. Applies appropriate coding patterns and best practices (e.g., leveraging state-of-the-art generative artificial intelligence [GenAI], approaches to source code organization, naming conventions). Identifies and escalates blockers or unknowns during the development process, communicates how they will impact timelines, and identifies strategies and/or opportunities to address them.

Design

• Independently creates a clear test strategy that ensures solution quality, prevents regression from being introduced into existing code. Ensures test plans incorporate security testing to validate security invariants (including negative cases). Drives adding new tests to cover gaps, deleting or fixing broken tests, and improving the speed, reliability, and defect localization of the test suite. Independently builds testable code and considers testability during design for a project/sub-section of a product/solution. Understands the different types of tests that can be done on a particular system (e.g., unit tests), maintains up-to-date understanding of testing architectures used both across Microsoft and across the industry, and applies them across the architecture as appropriate. Identifies difficult or untestable sections of codes for a project/sub-section of a product/solution for future design or rearchitecture discussions. Leverages artificial intelligence (AI) tools for test automation.
• Identifies dependencies and incorporates them into the development of design documents for a product, application, service or platform. Actively identifies other teams and technologies to leverage, how they interact, and where their own system or team can support others. Understands upstream and downstream interactions between systems and ensures security, compliance, performance, and reliability can be achieved across the entire stack. Collaborates with other teams to reach common goals where dependencies and validation concerns overlap. Works across teams to resolve conflicts around dependency ownership and required work.
• Leads discussions for and owns the architecture of a products/solutions and creates proposals for architecture by testing design hypotheses and develop complex design specifications. Tests and explores various design options for a complex product/solution scenario, outlining strengths and weaknesses of each option. Independently collaborates with architects to build and modify complex products/solutions, providing feedback as needed. Owns or collaborates with other engineers on the architecture of solutions, with minimal technical oversight. Develops design documents that support user stories and other product requirements. Maintains awareness of the current technology landscape, and determines how to integrate these technologies within existing systems. Shares learnings and identified solutions from investigations with the team and owns for some design decisions. Ensures system architecture and individual designs meet performance, scalability, resiliency, cost of goods sold (COGS), disaster recovery, and other requirements and expectations. Upholds Microsoft standards of security, privacy, and other compliance requirements and expectations. Understands and coaches less experienced engineers on the importance of building solutions that expand upon the work of others. Drives the refinement of products through data analytics, and makes informed decisions in engineering products through data integration. Reviews designs/architectures within and across teams to provide recommendations for improvements.

Engineering Excellence

• Applies best practices to build code based on well-established methods and secure design principles while also applying best practices for new code development and formal validation of security invariants. Drives product development and scaling to customer requirements and applies best practices for meeting scaling needs and performance expectations and security promises.
• Considers, identifies requirements for, and drives comprehensive application of automation within production and deployment of a product, targeting zero-touch deployment when possible. Runs code in simulated or other non-production environments to confirm functionality and error-free runtime for products.
• Drives efforts to ensure the correct processes are followed to achieve a high degree of security, privacy, safety, and accessibility. Creates and assures the presence of visible evidence (e.g., audit trail) to demonstrate compliance for products. Develops and maintains a deep understanding of the implications of onboarding new technologies following expectations of compliance at Microsoft. Demonstrates and maintains an up-to-date understanding of both global and local regulations for technologies and system applications to ensure regulations are followed and met.
• Works with partner teams to ensure a project/sub-system of a product works well with the components of the partner team, ensuring proper end-to-end testing, live-site coverage, scalability, performance, and DRI escalation pathways are established before going live.
• Remains current in skills by investing time and effort into being informed of current developments. Proactively seeks new knowledge, evaluating new trends, technical solutions, and patterns, assessing how to adapt them to current problems. Conducts learning and literary sessions to raise awareness on relevant engineering design principles (e.g., security, testability, performance, scalability, accessibility, product knowledge).
• Uses and enhances, or builds, new software developer tools to support easier, faster, and more effective software engineering for products. Identifies whether open so

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