Principal Software Engineer
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Oct 30, 2026. First seen by Alion on Jul 23, 2026. Microsoft scores B on the Alion truth index.
Moving data reliably at cloud scale is one of the hardest problems in the industry, and it is the foundation every analytics and AI scenario depends on. On the Fabric Data Factory team, you will help build and own the Data Factory workload within Microsoft Fabric, the unified analytics platform. You will shape the pipelines, dataflows, and related tooling that let customers move, transform, and orchestrate large volumes of data across diverse sources and destinations, taking on challenges in throughput, fault tolerance, scalability, and cost efficiency.
We are hiring a Principal Software Engineer on the Fabric Data Factory team, where you will architect complex data integration products end to end, set technical direction across the full engineering lifecycle, and mentor engineers as you drive quality, security, and live-site reliability. Your work will span authoring experiences, runtime execution, monitoring, and diagnostics, in close partnership with teams across Fabric, Azure Data Factory, and Power Query. This opportunity will allow you to deepen your expertise in distributed systems at cloud scale, broaden your technical influence across partner engineering organizations, and grow your impact on a platform used by enterprise customers worldwide.
This role is based in Redmond and requires three days per week in the office. At Microsoft, our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more guides how we partner with customers to deliver trusted, impactful solutions. With a growth mindset culture, we innovate responsibly and measure success by shared progress, people, teams, and customers. Join us to do meaningful work that changes the world and helps shape what's next for everyone.
Responsibilities
- Architects complex products end to end by creating and iterating on design documents, evaluating trade-offs, and ensuring performance, scalability, and resiliency requirements are met.
- Collaborates across teams to resolve dependency and ownership conflicts.
- Partners with internal stakeholders to determine customer and user requirements for scenarios and translates them into technical direction.
- Improves artificial intelligence (AI) tools and practices across the software development lifecycle, takes ownership of AI-generated assets, and experiments to improve capabilities.
- Leads by example in code quality by conducting timely, insightful code reviews, upholding standards, security, and compliance, and mentoring engineers using automated analysis tools integrated into the build process.
- Designs and owns test strategies that prevent regression, incorporate security testing, and cover edge and negative cases.
- Builds testable code from the start and identifies hard-to-test areas for future rearchitecture.
- Drives engineering excellence through automation, zero-touch deployment goals, security-as-code principles, threat modeling, and compliance evidence, and advocates new industry trends, tools, and regulations to peers.
- Plans and delivers features with full lifecycle ownership by breaking work into tracked tasks, managing feature flighting and rollback plans, and automating deployments following safe-change practices.
- Owns live-site reliability as a Designated Responsible Individual (DRI) by integrating telemetry and observability, responding to incidents within service-level agreements, driving postmortems and root-cause fixes, and improving troubleshooting guides and on-call practices.
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, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR equivalent experience.
Additional 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
- 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 OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field
TypeScript, or Python OR equivalent experience.
Communicates clearly and respectfully in both written and verbal formats, including emails, proposals, and reports, ensuring all parties are heard, understood, and aligned toward shared goals.
Demonstrates solid English language proficiency and oral communication skills to effectively give instructions, receive feedback, and collaborate with colleagues and stakeholders.
Fosters collaborative innovation by engaging diverse internal and external stakeholders in the creation and development of novel products, processes, and research.
Negotiates mutually satisfying outcomes by actively listening to others' objectives, representing the organization's interests, and finding common ground.
Designs and architects scalable products, services, and systems by applying sound engineering and design principles across the full development lifecycle.
Engineers robust, performant software solutions grounded in computer science fundamentals, including distributed systems, algorithm design, and scalable application architecture.
Enhances project and product execution by integrating planning, quality assurance, and lifecycle management practices to keep delivery aligned with strategic goals.
Applies a data-driven approach to problem-solving by extracting actionable insights from data and making informed, strategic decisions within the broader organizational context.
Software Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $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
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.