{"id":1594245,"url":"https://alion.io/job/microsoft-principal-software-engineering-manager-4","title":"Principal Software Engineering Manager","company":{"id":18,"name":"Microsoft","domain":"microsoft.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/microsoft","size_band":"5000+","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Eightfold","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":40,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-10-02T05:45:00Z"}},"role":"Leadership","role_family":"Leadership","seniority":"lead","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Hyderabad, India"],"countries":["IN"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":30000,"max_usd":78000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":22},"experience_years_min":12,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Copilot","optional":false},{"name":"Edge AI","optional":false},{"name":"Fine-tuning","optional":false},{"name":"LLM Guardrails","optional":false},{"name":"ONNX Runtime","optional":false},{"name":"Windows","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-16T13:49:56Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-01","last_verified_at":"2026-10-02T20:47:17Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":16,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":16},"description":"OverviewThe Microsoft Windows & Devices (W+D) team is on a journey to deliver iconic experiences across hardware, software, and services that people love and use every day. A core part of the W+D strategy is delivering devices with excellent Fundamentals and delightful AI experiences that blend the power of the Edge with the scale of the cloud.\nAs a Principal Software Engineering Manager in W+D Silicon and Fundamentals Team you will set technical and execution direction along with building and growing a high performing team in the areas of AI, silicon and software. We remain laser-focused on establishing Fundamentals as a delighter for the Copilot+ PC brand.If you love the pursuit of excellence and are inspired by the challenge of driving innovations that impact how the world lives, works and plays, then we invite you to an exciting opportunity to innovate, influence, transform, inspire and grow within the W+D Silicon and Fundamentals Team.\nThis role carries end-to-end ownership across people, technology, and delivery, with an explicit mandate to drive AI-forward engineering practices at scale to improve productivity, quality, and developer effectiveness.\nResponsibilities\nThis role focuses on leading teams that design, build, validate and operate scalable software solutions in the areas of AI, silicon and software with laser-focus on establishing great Fundamentals. As a Principal Software Engineering Manager, focuses on people leadership, technical direction, and delivery outcomes across teams.\nIn this role, you are expected to:\nLead, coach, and support a team of Software Engineers by providing clear expectations, regular feedback, and career guidance through one-on-one connections, mentoring, and performance discussions.\nSet and align technical direction and execution plans by partnering with Product Managers and cross-functional stakeholders to translate customer needs and business priorities into engineering plans.\nSupport operational excellence and delivery consistency by reinforcing engineering fundamentals, planning practices, and coordinated response to incidents and live-site issues.\nLeverage customer feedback, telemetry, and product usage data to identify improvement opportunities, prioritize investments, and guide teams toward long-term Windows Fundamentals enhancements.\nEstablish and reinforce engineering practices for design reviews, code reviews, testing, and continuous integration to support secure, maintainable, and scalable solutions.\nProvide technical guidance and escalation support by working with engineers on complex diagnostics using debugging tools, performance analysis, and code-level investigation, and representing the team in cross-organization discussions.\nFoster a customer-focused and inclusive team environment where engineers understand customer impact, collaborate across teams, and take shared ownership of outcomes that matter to customers.\nAI-Forward Engineering\nChampion AI-assisted and agentic engineering workflows across the org; set standards and expectations so teams use AI to move faster without compromising security or quality.\nEstablish guardrails and best practices for responsible use of AI tools-ensuring correctness, security, privacy, and compliance.\nEncourage teams to use AI to:\nAccelerate root-cause analysis and debugging\nImprove test coverage and validation\nReduce toil through automation and repeatable workflows\nPartner with AI-forward initiatives across Windows to scale learnings, patterns, and reusable assets.\nQualifications\nRequired Qualifications:\nBachelor’s degree in computer science or related technical field AND 12+ years in AI/ML software or systems engineering\n 4+ years of people management experience, including hiring and developing engineering teams\nAct as the primary bridge between model development teams, software API engineers, and Microsoft ecosystem stakeholders to define feature acceptance thresholds and validation gating.\nLead the design and delivery of internal tools that automate the measurement of accuracy degradation (e.g., drift in quantized INT4/INT8 models) and API-level performance overheads.\nAlign engineering metrics with the Windows AI Foundry, DirectML, and ONNX Runtime specifications to ensure flawless execution providers.\nEstablish regression tracking systems to evaluate how model updates alter API response latencies, memory footprint, and user-experience quality across Windows PC form factors.\nStrong technical background in systems, platform, on-device AI experiences with the ability to guide architecture and technical decisions.\nStrong familiarity with the Windows ML architecture, DirectML, and implementing Execution Providers (EPs) within ONNX Runtime\nProven track record of working side-by-side with model training/fine-tuning teams and application-layer software engineers\nFamiliarity with Windows architecture, OS fundamentals, and On Device AI concepts.\nFamiliarity with scripting or automation to support operational efficiency and repeatable processes.\n\n#W+DJOBS\nAdditional or preferred qualifications\nOther 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:\n Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter. \nThis position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.\nMicrosoft 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.","description_format":"text","description_chars":6351,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":12,"management_years_min":4,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Console Games","Cloud Platforms (IaaS & PaaS)","Gaming Consoles","Developer Tools"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-01T17:06:24Z"}],"liveness":{"score":41,"band":"fade","label":"Fading","p_open":1,"p_active":0.547,"p_room":0.75,"age_days":15,"expected_fill_days":20,"reasons":["conf:12","stale_co","velocity","win:late","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-02T05:45:00Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/microsoft-principal-software-engineering-manager-4","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/microsoft-principal-software-engineering-manager-4.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-03T00:58:40Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","usage":{"tier":"crawler","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":757,"day_limit":5000,"remaining_today":4243,"minute_limit":60,"resets_at":"2026-10-04T00:00:00Z"}}}