Principal Software Development Engineer

Microsoft Start Network Ranking Infrastructure team is responsible serving 100M+ daily active users with most personalized experience. The system will power Start feed across a wide range of products like Windows, Edge, Super app, Skype, and Outlook.  

As a Principal Software Development Engineer in the team, you will be directly impacting billions of users of Microsoft Start. Our mission is to provide relevant, personalized, safe, quality, and engaging content to the users who utilize our product. We use advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) and LLMs based techniques to serve high quality content to Microsoft Start users. We are looking for a hands-on tech lead to lead platform efforts of Ranking Infrastructure, who is not afraid to explore new ideas and bring the goodness of modern technology to MSN. 

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. 

In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day. 

Required Qualficiations:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, or related technical discipline AND 6+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python 
  • OR equivalent experience. 
• 4+ years of experience designing and building scalable cloud solutions in distributed systems. 
• 4+ years of experience building and shipping production quality software or services. 

Additional or preferred qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 10+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python

  • OR Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python

    o OR equivalent experience.

• Passion in designing and building very large scale distributed systems. 
• Experience with building software systems that apply security best practices. 
• Drive to improve performance, availability, and reliability of services. 
• Drive to increase efficiencies through automation. 

Software Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $137,600 - $267,000 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $180,400 - $294,000 per year. Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation.

Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

Microsoft will accept applications and processes offers for these roles on an ongoing basis.

• Lead the architectural design and development of complex distributed software systems. 
• Partner deeply across disciplines as well as across teams to help deliver results and products that are highly reliable and scalable, learning constantly while solving tough technical challenges. 
• Providing technical guidance and mentorship to engineers and grow them in their career. 
• Participate in code reviews and provide feedback to other engineers.  
• Hands-on engineer who delivers high quality code that is maintainable, performant, and testable and used in cross products. 
• Collaborate with product managers, and partner teams to understand requirements, translate them into technical specifications and to an implementable solution for which success is measurable and has timelines specified. 
• Embody our Culture and Values