{"id":1311427,"url":"https://alion.io/job/microsoft-senior-software-engineer-8","title":"Senior Software Engineer","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":17,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-09-29T05:45:00Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"senior","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Zurich, Switzerland"],"countries":["CH"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":146200,"max":245900,"currency":"CHF","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":296882},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":8,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"C#","optional":false},{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"Copilot","optional":false},{"name":"GitHub","optional":false},{"name":"JavaScript","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Rust","optional":false},{"name":"TypeScript","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-15T19:23:23Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-23","last_verified_at":"2026-09-29T23:30:25Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":14,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":14},"description":"OverviewVisual Studio Code is where millions of developers turn ideas into working software. We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer in Zurich to help build its next generation of editing, development, and GitHub Copilot experiences.\nYou will help make complex developer workflows feel simple, from everyday coding and debugging to delegating work to AI. This is hands-on product engineering in a large TypeScript and Rust codebase: you will shape a feature or technical area's direction, implement it, and keep improving it after release. We value engineers who care about how software feels, make sound decisions amid ambiguity, and learn from what they ship.\nAbout the team\nWe work in the open, with direct feedback from developers and extension authors. You will collaborate with engineers, designers, researchers, and product teams across our team, GitHub, and Microsoft. We combine community feedback, research, experiments, and engineering judgment to decide what to build. Performance, accessibility, extensibility, security, and developer control are part of the product, not finishing touches.\nExamples of work\nThe role spans core VS Code and Copilot; illustrative projects include:\nImprove navigation and editing in large repositories without slowing down startup or typing.\nBuild a Copilot workflow that helps developers delegate a coding task, inspect the changes, and validate them using VS Code's review, testing, and debugging tools.\nExtend VS Code APIs so new capabilities work reliably with existing extensions and remote development environments.\nRefine our existing engineering process with custom tools fine-tuned for throughput and quality.\nResponsibilities\nIdentify product and engineering opportunities, helping define what to build through user feedback, experimentation, and technical insight.\nShape technical direction within your area, balancing near-term product needs with long-term maintainability.\nLead hands-on design, implementation, testing, and delivery of VS Code features, coordinating contributors and partner-team dependencies as needed.\nOwn outcomes after release: understand adoption, investigate quality issues, and use telemetry, evaluations, and user feedback to guide improvements.\nImprove responsiveness and reliability through profiling, debugging, and automated testing; strengthen the tools that let the team experiment and ship confidently.\nWork in the open: discuss designs publicly, investigate community-reported issues, and collaborate directly with developers and extension authors.\nMentor engineers and improve technical decisions through constructive design and code reviews.\nQualifications\nBasic Qualifications:\nBachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 4+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR equivalent experience.\nSolid programming and application engineering skills, with the ability to become productive in a large TypeScript and Rust codebase.\nExperience leading technical design and hands-on delivery for complex projects involving multiple contributors, within one team or across partner teams.\nSound product and engineering judgment, including the ability to turn an ambiguous user problem into a practical, maintainable solution.\nSolid communication and collaboration skills, including working across team boundaries and helping other engineers grow.\nPreferred Qualifications\nWe welcome a range of product backgrounds; these are helpful experiences, not a checklist. Previous work on developer tools, open-source projects, or AI products is not required.\nMaster'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 Bachelor'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 equivalent experience.\nExperience building interactive applications, with attention to performance, accessibility, or cross-platform behavior.\nExperience designing APIs, extension points, or reusable components.\nExperience improving products through direct user feedback, telemetry, or experiments.\nPractical familiarity with AI coding tools and judgment about where they help, fail, or change development workflows.\nExperience building AI-powered features or contributing to developer tools or open-source projects.\nProduct and open source\nhttps://code.visualstudio.com\nhttps://github.com/microsoft/vscode\nAbility 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:\nMicrosoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.\nMicrosoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations, and ordinances. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.\nBenefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.\nSoftware Engineering IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across Switzerland is CHF 146,200.00 - CHF 245,900.00 per year. Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation.\nFind additional benefits and pay information here:\nhttps://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/corporate-pay/switzerland-corporate-pay.html\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":7215,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":8,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"Switzerland","iso":"CH","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Console Games","Cloud Platforms (IaaS & PaaS)","Gaming Consoles","Developer Tools"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-26T16:29:11Z"}],"liveness":{"score":53,"band":"ok","label":"Likely open","p_open":1,"p_active":0.585,"p_room":0.9,"age_days":13,"expected_fill_days":22,"reasons":["conf:2","stale_co","velocity","win:mid","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-09-29T05:45:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":296882,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/microsoft-senior-software-engineer-8","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/microsoft-senior-software-engineer-8.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-09-30T01:45:01Z","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":1330,"day_limit":5000,"remaining_today":3670,"minute_limit":60,"resets_at":"2026-10-01T00:00:00Z"}}}