Principal Software Engineer - Azure Storage

Principal Software Engineer Imagine a world with virtually unlimited storage, accessible anytime, anywhere, from any device. A world where individuals, businesses, researchers, and organizations can securely store, access, analyze, and collaborate on data on a global scale. Microsoft Azure Storage is making that vision a reality. Azure Storage is Microsoft's massively scalable, highly distributed, and ubiquitously accessible cloud storage platform, powering critical workloads for customers around the world. As Azure continues its rapid growth, we are building the next generation of storage infrastructure designed to manage Exabytes of data today and scale toward Zettabytes in the future. The Azure Storage NPI SKU Qualification & Performance team plays a critical role in enabling this growth. Our team develops the software platforms, automation systems, telemetry pipelines, and performance analysis frameworks used to qualify and validate next-generation Azure Storage hardware technologies before they are deployed into production. We work across servers, SSDs (solid state drives), networking components, firmware releases, operating systems, and platform innovations to ensure every Azure Storage SKU meets Microsoft's standards for performance, reliability, scalability, and operational excellence. We are seeking a highly motivated Principal Software Engineer to architect our qualification strategy, performance validation, automation, service reliability, and engineering excellence across Azure Storage's next generation infrastructure platforms. This engineer will drive cross-organizational initiatives spanning Storage, Compute, Networking, Platform Engineering, and hardware partners while influencing technical direction across multiple teams. This is a Microsoft role onsite 3 days a week in Redmond, Washington. 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 Lead qualification and onboarding of next-generation Azure Storage infrastructure and technologies Drive performance, scalability, reliability, and fleet-readiness validation for hyperscale storage systems Develop automation and tooling to improve qualification efficiency, observability, and operational excellence Partner across engineering organizations to deliver complex cross-functional initiatives and solve large-scale technical challenges Provide technical leadership through architecture guidance, incident resolution, mentorship, and engineering best practices Qualifications Required Qualifications: Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related technical field AND 6+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C#, C++, Python, and Java 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, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related technical field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C#, C++, Python, and Java OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related technical field AND 12+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C#, C++, Python, and Java OR equivalent experience Experience with: Designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems or cloud services Performance engineering, benchmarking, capacity planning, or large-scale infrastructure validation Azure Storage, distributed databases, storage systems, SSD/HDD (solid state drive/hard disk drive) technologies, or hyperscale infrastructure Hardware qualification, firmware validation, server platforms, or datacenter technologies Telemetry and analytics platforms such as Kusto, Power BI, Azure Monitor, or similar technologies Windows kernel debugging, crash dump analysis, Windows storage stack troubleshooting, and knowledge of Windows storage architecture including Storport, Miniport drivers, and I/O (input/output) subsystem internals Microsoft Corporation