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September 24, 2025

Principal Software Engineer

Senior • On-site

$139,900 - $274,800/yr

Overview

Microsoft Azure is building the fastest network in public cloud. We are seeking candidates who live and breathe kernels, love to code and to build network systems and services, taking things from idea to production. The Azure Host Networking team is where the rubber meets the road for Software-Defined Networking – we create the host platform that allows SDN controllers to perform arbitrary packet manipulations and virtualization, with very high speed on various computer architecture & platform.


We build the Azure Virtual Switch where the action happens in software, and own the underlying hardware platform on the host that enables us to scale SDN as the network moves from 40Gbps to 100Gbps, 200 Gbps and beyond!

The datapath team created all the host network virtualization capabilities, as well as the high speed RDMA platform\that scaled Azure Storage. We also build in other larger scale cloud SDN scenarios for performance, security and reliability, many of which are used by large scale workload like online commerce, AI, big data, etc.

As a software engineer working in this field, the position will allow you to grow your knowledge about large scale system design\implementation\maintenance, develop deep understanding on cloud engineering and accelerate your career growth in the cloud business.

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.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:
  • Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 6+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C or C++
    • OR equivalent experience
  •  4+ years of experince in System Design and development skills, and performance optimization.

Other Requirements: 

  • Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings:  
    • Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter. 
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 or C++
    • 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 or C++
    • OR equivalent experience.
  • Linux/Windows kernel and/or DPDK development experience Systems programming experience Kernel or driver development experience.
  • Experience in shipping products or services with quality and drive for profound impact.
  • Ability to work with multiple partner teams and external vendors to drive impact.

Software Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $139,900 - $274,800 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 $188,000 - $304,200 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 for the role until October 7, 2025.

 

Responsibilities

• Partners with appropriate stakeholders to determine user requirements for a set of scenarios.

• Leads identification of dependencies and the development of design documents for a product, application, service, or platform.
• Leads by example and mentors others to produce extensible and maintainable code used across products.
• Leverages subject-matter expertise of cross-product features with appropriate stakeholders (e.g., project managers) to drive multiple group's project plans, release plans, and work items.
• Holds accountability as a Designated Responsible Individual (DRI), mentoring engineers across products/solutions, working on-call to monitor system/product/service for degradation, downtime, or interruptions.
• Proactively seeks new knowledge and adapts to new trends, technical solutions, and patterns that will improve the availability, reliability, efficiency, observability, and performance of products while also driving consistency in monitoring and operations at scale and shares knowledge with other engineers.
• Responsible for building, testing and deploying networking acceleration on Azure including Single Root IO Virtualization (SRIOV), Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) for network appliances, Linux network acceleration, Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA), containers, etc. You should be able to drive projects with other teams in Microsoft, our hardware partners and various Linux distros.