Principal Software Engineer Manager

The Cloud Delivery team within Microsoft Defender helps services and product capabilities reach cloud environments quickly and reliably. We partner with service engineering and operations teams to improve deployment pipelines, automate readiness checks, and make releases easier to validate, diagnose, and operate. We aim to reduce routine manual intervention without losing the checks and recovery paths that keep releases safe.

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

As a Principal Software Engineering Manager in Microsoft Defender, you will lead engineers and work across the organization to help build software and improve processes to make our cloud deployments safer, more reliable, and less dependent on manual intervention.

You will own people development, technical direction, and delivery through your team while contributing hands-on to architecture, code, and production troubleshooting. Working with service teams across Defender, you will advance deployment automation and engineering efficiency by reducing repetitive work and developing reusable solutions to shared operational challenges.

Responsibilities include:

• Hire, coach, and develop engineers through clear expectations, actionable feedback, performance management, and career growth opportunities.
• Set engineering priorities and deliver results through your team, balancing deployment improvements with reliability, security, and ongoing support.
• Lead architecture and design for Azure deployment automation and infrastructure tooling, addressing service dependencies, integration boundaries, and failure recovery.
• Contribute code, review designs and implementations, and troubleshoot production issues while developing engineers’ technical judgment and ownership.
• Partner with Defender service teams to automate deployment preparation and validation, reduce manual handoffs, and clarify ownership of tooling and service operation.
• Drive engineering efficiency across Defender by identifying recurring deployment and operational work, improving existing workflows, and building reusable automation where it delivers measurable benefit.
• Use deployment telemetry and incident learning to measure improvements in reliability and manual effort and guide testing, observability, and safe rollout practices.

Qualifications

Qualifications - Required:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field
• 10+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR equivalent experience.
• Experience managing software engineers, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and career development.
• Experience delivering and supporting production software through an engineering team, including prioritization and dependency management. -
• Ability to explain technical decisions, risks, and alternatives to engineering partners and leaders and resolve competing requirements.

  Qualifications - Other Requirements:

  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 background and Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

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.