Principal Software Engineer - AI Powered Observability
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Sep 28, 2026. First seen by Alion on Sep 15, 2026. Microsoft scores B on the Alion truth index.
Are you a customer-obsessed, AI-curious problem-solver who thrives in an inclusive, collaborative global team? Join Engineering Operations (EngOps) - the organization driving operational excellence across the Microsoft Cloud to strengthen quality, reliability, security, and customer trust. As part of EngOps, you’lldesign solutions that prevent issues before they happen, embed AI-powered automation, and turn signals into actions that deliver measurable customer impact. Our culture of empowerment, inclusion, and growth mindset defines how we work.
Azure Reliability is driving transformation to AI-powered operations by building scalable ML infrastructure that enables autonomous, reliable, and secure cloud systems. We are looking for candidates that can combine deep technical expertisein MLOpswith a proven ability to deliver measurable business impact through continuous learning, policy-driven governance, and responsible AI practices. Success in this role means advancing operational autonomy, quality, and security, while fostering collaboration and accountability across teams.
Every day, customers stake their business and reputation on our cloud. You can help #EngOps keep them secure, resilient, and ready.
We are looking to hire a Principal Software Engineer - AI Powered Observability, tok take on this rare opportunity to shape autonomous outage detection, AI-driven reliability, and customer-impact protection across Microsoft at global scale.
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.
This role will require a minimum of three days in office.
Responsibilities
Partner across multiple product groups to apply subject-matter expertisein distributed systems design practices, interactions between cloud technology layers and components, basic dependencies at scale, and the code that defines infrastructures.
Lead by example and mentors'others to produce extensible and maintainable code used across products.
Develop and evangelize insights, best practices, and standards that can be applied to improve system, platform, and/or product development and operations across the business.
Drive continuous improvements in the architecture, code, features, operationsand comprehensive use scenarios of products by leveragingend-to-end technical expertise.
Make improvements to the product fundamentals and architecture, share knowledgeand code, always looking for ways to make what we build useful to multiple teams and products.
Demonstrates end-to-end expertisein distributed systems design,interactions between cloud technology layers.
Provide technical leadership in test maturity reviews, static analysisreviews, meetings, on-call rotations, and incident responses throughout product development and operations cycles.
Provides deep business and technical expertiseas requiredto resolve major incidents.
Qualifications
Required/minimum 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.
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.
Additional or 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 AND 12+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
- OR equivalent experience.
- Awareness of, and ability to reason about, modern distributed software design patterns and cloud systems architecture, including microservices, containers, load-balancing, queuing, caching.
- Experience with C#/Java/C/C++/Golang.
- Experience in building, shipping and operating reliable solutions.
- Experience with Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), risk assessment systems, or intelligent automation solutions.
- Experience leading technical initiatives and influencing architecture, design, and engineering best practices across teams.
- Demonstrated ability to drive operational excellence through automation, scalability, reliability, and continuous improvement.
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.