Principal Software Engineer - CoreAI

Overview 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. The Core AI organization at Microsoft builds the end-to-end Azure AI stack/PaaS and is core to Azure’s innovation and differentiation. We are the team building the global Azure AI infrastructure for running the largest AI workloads on the planet. 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. Within Core AI, the Azure AI Knowledge team powers rich search experiences for apps of all kinds, also serving as a knowledge service for LLMs. Integrates the best of Microsoft AI for content understanding, search relevance and more. The rapid evolution of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) has sparked a revolution in the need for advanced retrieval systems. These systems are the backbone of Copilot-style applications, seamlessly blending large language models with external data to drive unparalleled user experiences. Within Azure, our team stands at the vanguard, pioneering the development of cutting-edge retrieval systems through Azure AI Search. We are on the lookout for an experienced engineer to join us in this exciting journey. This role presents a rare opportunity to lead the charge in developing pivotal features for an Azure service situated at the epicenter of the AI innovation wave. Operating at the dynamic intersection of AI, Information Retrieval, and Cloud Services, our team thrives on pushing the boundaries of what's possible. This is more than just a job; it's an invitation to shape the future of AI-driven applications and cloud infrastructure. By joining us at this pivotal moment, you'll play a pivotal role in driving the next wave of accelerated growth for our business. Embrace the opportunity to innovate within our core cloud service infrastructure, and together, let's chart the course for the future of AI-powered retrieval

Responsibilities

• Lead the architecture, design, implementation, and delivery of large-scale cloud services and AI-powered products. Author design proposals, drive engineering execution, and ensure quality through comprehensive testing, automation, and security compliance.
• Partner with stakeholders, customers, and cross-functional teams to understand requirements, incorporate continuous feedback, and define success metrics that drive product improvement and customer value.
• Design and build secure, permission-aware retrieval and knowledge systems that integrate seamlessly with enterprise identity, authentication, and authorization platforms.
• Drive service scalability, reliability, performance, and operational excellence across globally distributed cloud infrastructure. Establish telemetry, monitoring, and diagnostics to proactively identify and resolve issues.
• Mentor and grow engineers through technical leadership, code reviews, and engineering best practices. Promote the development of high-quality, maintainable, and resilient software.
• Lead project planning, experimentation, and deployment strategies. Evaluate technical tradeoffs, optimize solutions for business outcomes, and ensure safe, reliable releases with consideration for broader system impacts.
• Own live-site operations, incident response, and root cause analysis. Develop operational playbooks and processes that improve service health, reliability, and recovery.
• Collaborate closely with product managers, applied scientists, architects, and partner teams to deliver innovative AI experiences and foundational platform capabilities.
• Analyze production telemetry, customer feedback, and usage patterns to identify opportunities for improving performance, quality, reliability, and cost efficiency.
• Contribute to the architecture and evolution of foundational services that power Microsoft Foundry, AI agents, enterprise knowledge experiences, and next-generation retrieval platforms.
• Champion engineering excellence through automation, developer productivity investments, and continuous process improvement while maintaining compliance with security, privacy, accessibility, and regulatory requirements.
• Drive cross-team collaboration to resolve dependencies, align technical strategy, and deliver integrated solutions that meet customer and partner needs.

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

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience designing and building large-scale distributed systems in a cloud environment.
• Strong software engineering skills in C#, Java, C++, Rust, or a comparable language.
• Experience developing highly available services with a strong focus on reliability, performance, and maintainability.
• Knowledge of cloud-native architectures, storage systems, networking, and service operations.
• Excellent problem-solving, collaboration, and communication skills.
• Experience with search technologies, information retrieval, ranking systems, vector databases, or recommendation systems.
• Experience with AI/ML systems, LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), agent frameworks, or knowledge management platforms.
• Familiarity with Azure services, distributed data systems, and large-scale processing pipelines.
• Experience building developer platforms, APIs, or enterprise SaaS products.
• Passion for operational excellence, observability, automation, and customer-focused engineering.

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: <#> 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.