Principal Software Engineer

Quick Facts

• Role: Principal Software Engineer

• Focus: Architecture for secure, enterprise-scale software, data, and AI systems

• Domains: Supportability, customer-centric engineering, escalation intelligence, operational analytics

Description

Own the end-to-end architecture for secure, enterprise-scale platforms spanning supportability, customer-centric engineering, escalation intelligence, and operational analytics. Lead AI-native engineering practices across SDLC with Responsible AI controls and workflow automation, setting technical direction across interconnected software, data, and agentic AI systems. Operate with broad autonomy to align multiple teams and establish durable foundations for security, privacy, scale, and enterprise adoption.

Responsibilities

• Lead adoption of AI-native engineering practices in SDLC, including Responsible AI controls for AI-generated design/code artifacts and workflow automation.

• Influence strategic prioritization using data-driven recommendations, KPI frameworks, and experimentation-informed decisions.

• Define and own end-to-end architecture for software and data platforms supporting engineering health, supportability, customer escalation, and operational intelligence.

• Lead architecture and design reviews for complex distributed services and data systems, balancing scalability, resiliency, performance, security, privacy, and cost tradeoffs.

• Establish architecture patterns, standards, and guardrails for code quality, testing strategy, observability, deployment safety, and dependency management across teams.

• Architect and govern data foundations: data models, schemas, lineage, contracts, semantic layers, quality controls, and governance mechanisms.

• Drive telemetry-first engineering: instrumentation, monitoring, anomaly detection, root-cause workflows, and incident prevention.

• Lead live-site reliability strategy: DRI readiness, service health indicators, failure mode analysis, postmortems, and continuous reliability improvements.

• Partner with product management, engineering, support/escalation, and leadership stakeholders to turn ambiguous business needs into architecture roadmaps and milestones.

• Lead cross-team dependency planning and execution; negotiate ownership boundaries and align teams to shared delivery outcomes.

• Ensure compliance and auditability by embedding secure-by-design, least-privilege, data handling controls, and regulatory requirements into architecture and operations.

• Mentor senior engineers and technical leads; improve architectural quality and decision velocity through reusable patterns.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science (or related technical field) AND 6+ years of technical engineering experience with coding in C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python (or equivalent experience).

• Ability to meet required Microsoft, customer, and/or government security screening requirements.

• Pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Benefits

• Typical U.S. base pay range: USD $142,800–$274,800; Bay Area/NYC ranges: USD $188,000–$304,200.

• May be eligible for benefits and other compensation (role-dependent).