Principal Software Engineer

The Azure App Testing team in Core AI provide cloud-scale testing capabilities that help developers validate the reliability, performance, and quality of modern applications. This includes Azure Load Testing for performance testing and Playwright Workspaces for end-to-end functional testing, enabling teams to test at scale without managing their own testing infrastructure.As applications increasingly incorporate AI and autonomous agents, testing is evolving and we are extending the platform to various agentic workloads. Playwright Workspaces provides fully managed, cloud-hosted browsers for developers, automation clients and AI agents can connect to remotely for high-scale secure and performant browser automation workloads.

We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer who can provide deep technical leadership to shape the direction of Azure App Testing and deliver secure, reliable, scalable developer services. In this hands-on individual contributor role, you will lead architecture and implementation across service boundaries, turn ambiguous customer needs into durable platform capabilities, and raise engineering standards through technical leadership and mentorship.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve the architecture of distributed, multi-tenant testing services, balancing reliability, performance, security, operability, and cost.

• Lead complex initiatives from design and prototyping through implementation, rollout, and sustained operation, while remaining hands-on in coding and deeply engaged in design and code reviews.

• Build scalable execution and orchestration capabilities for load testing and managed browser automation, including scheduling, concurrency, isolation, and resilient failure handling.

• Shape developer-friendly APIs, tooling, and CI/CD integrations that make testing a natural part of development and release workflows.

• Advance AI-assisted testing with rigorous evaluation, observable behaviour, appropriate safeguards, and meaningful measures of quality and customer value.

• Drive live-site excellence through actionable telemetry, service-level objectives, incident response, root-cause analysis, and prevention of recurring issues; participate in the team’s on-call rotation.

• Embed security, privacy, accessibility, and responsible AI into design and delivery, including identity, access control, and protection of customer test data.

• Partner with product managers, engineers, architects, security teams, and customers to set priorities, align architecture, resolve dependencies, and deliver cohesive platform capabilities.

• Mentor engineers, foster inclusive technical discussions, and improve engineering practices for testing, deployment safety, serviceability, and developer productivity.

Qualifications

Required qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.

• 10+ years of extensive experience designing, building, and operating production software, with demonstrated technical leadership on complex initiatives spanning multiple components or teams.

• Strong software engineering skills in one or more languages such as C#, Java, C++, Go, Python, or TypeScript, including maintainable design, automated testing, and effective code review.

• Deep understanding of distributed systems, service architecture, API design, concurrency, fault tolerance, and performance engineering.

• Experience operating cloud services and diagnosing complex production issues using telemetry, debugging, and structured root-cause analysis.

• Ability to lead through influence, explain architectural trade-offs, collaborate across disciplines, and mentor engineers.

• A customer-focused approach and commitment to secure, reliable, inclusive engineering.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience with Azure or comparable cloud platforms, containerised workloads, Kubernetes, and multi-tenant service infrastructure.

• Experience with browser automation or end-to-end testing using Playwright, and performance testing using JMeter, Locust, or comparable frameworks.

• Experience building developer platforms, SDKs, command-line tools, or integrations with GitHub, Azure DevOps, and CI/CD systems.

• Experience improving cloud resource efficiency, execution scheduling, service scalability, and infrastructure cost.

• Experience with AI-assisted developer tools or agentic workflows, including evaluation, reliability, and responsible AI practices.

• Experience collaborating with open-source communities or building services on open-source technologies.

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.