Principal Software Engineer, Microsoft HPC Pack
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Oct 13, 2026. First seen by Alion on Sep 15, 2026. Microsoft scores B on the Alion truth index.
Are you passionate about high-performance computing and solving complex systems-engineering challenges across enterprise, on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments? Join the Azure High-Performance Computing (HPC) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) team to help sustain one of Microsoft’s established enterprise computing platforms through a critical stage of its product lifecycle.
The Azure HPC and AI team, part of Azure Specialized, develops and supports technologies that enable customers to deploy, manage, and operate technical computing workloads across on-premises, hybrid, and Azure environments. In this role, you will work with experienced engineers and partner organizations on technically complex distributed systems, security response, product servicing, and responsible lifecycle management.
As a Principal Software Engineer, you will provide technical leadership for Microsoft HPC Pack engineering, servicing, security response, complex escalation investigation, and product retirement transition. You will own complex problems across the platform architecture and engineering lifecycle, preserve critical product knowledge, improve supportability, and guide engineers and partner teams through the remaining product lifecycle. This opportunity will allow you to strengthen your principal-level architectural leadership, deepen your expertise in enterprise high-performance computing and distributed systems, and influence security, servicing, and lifecycle decisions across multiple organizations.
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
- Serve as a principal-level technical authority for Microsoft HPC Pack architecture, engineering, servicing, and supportability, including workload scheduling, cluster management, deployment, diagnostics, security, and Azure integration.
- Lead the investigation and resolution of complex engineering issues, including Customer Service and Support (CSS) escalations, security vulnerabilities, reliability problems, installation and upgrade failures, workload-scheduling issues, node communication failures, and hybrid-cloud deployment issues.
- Own technically complex work throughout the engineering lifecycle, including requirements analysis, architecture, design, implementation, code review, validation, release, servicing, troubleshooting, and sustainable support handoff.
- Drive security and compliance engineering, including Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) assessment, dependency evaluation, security-update development, regression validation, release readiness, and production of engineering evidence for release and support decisions.
- Provide technical leadership for Microsoft HPC Pack retirement engineering, including critical security response, servicing decisions, customer-impact assessment, support-boundary clarification, documentation, knowledge transfer, and responsible product transition.
- Diagnose and resolve issues across distributed platform components and deployment scenarios, including head nodes, compute nodes, broker nodes, databases, job scheduling, node-management services, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) runtime, Representational State Transfer (REST) application programming interfaces (APIs), .NET interfaces, PowerShell, monitoring, diagnostics, high availability, Windows Server, supported Linux compute nodes, and Azure infrastructure.
- Define engineering approaches and influence technical decisions across teams while balancing security, reliability, compatibility, customer impact, engineering cost, and product-lifecycle constraints. Mentor engineers, raise engineering standards, and develop technical documentation and repeatable servicing, diagnostic, validation, and knowledge-transfer 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.
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 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.
10+ years of experience designing, developing, servicing, or supporting distributed systems or high-performance computing platforms.
8+ years of experience with workload scheduling, cluster management, or distributed-system diagnostics.
8+ years of experience with security/CVE response, production servicing, or complex customer escalation investigation.
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.