Principal Software Engineer - (Vector Search/Information Retrieval)
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Oct 16, 2026. First seen by Alion on Jul 17, 2026. Microsoft scores B on the Alion truth index.
Microsoft is a company where passionate innovators come to collaborate, envision what can be and take their careers further. This is a world of more possibilities, more innovation, more openness, and the sky is the limit thinking in a cloud-enabled world.
Microsoft’s Azure Data engineering team is leading the transformation of analytics in the world of data with products like databases, data integration, big data analytics, messaging & real-time analytics, and business intelligence. The products our portfolio include Microsoft Fabric, Azure SQL DB, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure PostgreSQL, Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Service Bus, Azure Event Grid, and Power BI. Our mission is to build the data platform for the age of AI, powering a new class of data-first applications and driving a data culture.
The Databases organization delivers trusted, scalable operational AI ready databases that power application development across cloud, hybrid, and on premises environments. Our portfolio includes SQL, Azure Cosmos DB, DocumentDB, PostgreSQL, and MySQL, supporting developers as they build AI native applications and run critical workloads at global scale.
We research and develop algorithms, models and high-performance libraries to build state-of-the-art AI-based information retrieval in Azure Data products. We build industry-leading vector search capabilities in multiple data products building on the DiskANN3 project (github.com/Microsoft/DiskANN). We also develop embedding models and other AI needed for semantic retrieval.
We are hiring a Principal Software Engineer to work closely with research and engineering teams to innovate and translate innovations into product in this area.
We do not just value differences or different perspectives. We seek them out and invite them in so we can tap into the collective power of everyone in the company. As a result, our customers are better served.
Responsibilities
- Ability to work independently and collaboratively with a fast-moving research team.
- Leads by example across teams and mentors others to produce extensible, maintainable, well-tested, secure, and performant code used across products that adheres to design specifications. Leads efforts to continuously improve code performance, testability, maintainability, effectiveness, and cost, while learning about and accounting for relevant trade-offs.
- Owns and leads efforts and discussions for the architecture of aspects of complex products/solutions (e.g., design, cost). Leads the testing and exploration of various design options across a set of complex product/solution scenarios, ensuring the strengths and weaknesses of each option are outlined and making recommendations for which design option is best. Creates proposals for architecture and design documents, and leads testing of hypotheses and proposed complex solutions. Shares and acts on findings from investigations, owns design decisions, and oversees the less experienced team members.
- Mentors others on and independently creates a clear test strategy that ensures solution quality, prevents regression from being introduced into existing code. Leads adding new tests to cover gaps, deleting or fixing broken tests, and improving the speed, reliability, and defect localization of the overall test suite. Mentors others on, and builds testable code and considers testability during design for a set of solutions
- Collaborates with partner teams to ensure a set of products work well with the components of the partner team, ensuring proper end-to-end testing, live-site coverage, scalability, performance, and DRI escalation pathways are established before going live.
- Leverages their subject-matter expertise to partner with appropriate stakeholders (e.g., technical program managers) to drive multiple groups' project plans, release plans, and work items. Breaks down long-term project vision into milestones as part of an overall roadmap.
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.
Job Requirements: Other & Additional
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
- 2+ years experience in two or more of the following:
- Rust
- Vector Search or Information Retrieval
- Algorithm development
- Database Internals
- Performance Engineering
- Numerical methods
- Experience developing and maintaining libraries.
- Ability to maintain high code quality while working with a lot of collaborators.
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.