Principal Software Engineer - CoreAI
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Oct 1, 2026. First seen by Alion on Sep 29, 2026. Microsoft scores B on the Alion truth index.
The 1ES (One Engineering System) team is responsible for enabling the world's best engineering teams with world-class tools and systems that help them ship products their customers love. 1ES develops and operates a set of engineering tools and services including build, verification services, code review tools, data analysis, and machine learning services - all working towards a unified engineering system for internal Microsoft needs. Distributed build, static analysis, test and release are at the center of Microsoft 1ES and are helping major groups within the company deliver features faster and with better quality. Our services are used by tens of thousands of developers, and we build, analyze, test and release millions of projects daily in a distributed service running at scale in multiple data centers across the world.
Our team delivers the core CI/CD infrastructure that accelerates software delivery across Microsoft and external customers. By orchestrating millions of compute resources daily - including VMs, containers, and custom lab environments - we enable developers to build, test, and ship with speed and confidence. The work directly impacts engineering velocity at massive scale, empowering teams to innovate faster and deliver higher-quality software.
As a Principal Software Engineer - CoreAI on our team, you will design and build distributed services that power the CI/CD infrastructure used by millions of developers across Microsoft and external customers. You'll work with Azure technologies to deliver and scale compute across a variety of platforms - including virtual machines, containers, and custom lab environments - spinning up millions of resources per day to meet demand. This opportunity will allow you to accelerate your career growth, deepen your expertise in cloud-scale distributed systems, and influence engineering practices at a global scale. We offer a flexible work environment, and team members can work from home either partially or fully, depending on location and preference.
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.
Responsibilities
- Collaborates with appropriate stakeholders to determine user requirements for a set of features and scenario.
- Contributes to and drives identification of dependencies and the development of design documents for a product, application, service, or platform.
- Contributes to efforts to break down larger work items into smaller work items and provides estimation.
- Creates, implements, optimizes, debugs, refactors, and reuses code to establish and improve performance and maintainability, effectiveness, and return on investment (ROI).
- Leverages subject-matter expertise of product features and partners with appropriate stakeholders (e.g., project managers) to drive a workgroup's project plans, release plans, and work items.
- Serves as a Designated Responsible Individual (DRI), developing and executing operational playbooks, participating in on-call rotations to monitor system, product, and service health, proactively communicating status to stakeholders, mentoring and guiding engineers during incident response, and leading restoration efforts for both simple and complex service disruptions.
- Continuously builds technical expertise and adopts emerging technologies, solutions, and operational best practices to enhance product availability, reliability, efficiency, observability, and performance, while driving scalable and consistent monitoring and operational excellence.
- Embodies our culture and values.
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.
Preferred/Additional Qualifications:
- 10+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
- Proven experience designing and building distributed services at scale
- Proficiency with Azure services (or other cloud services)
- Proficiency in C#
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.