Software Engineer II - CTJ - Poly

Overview

Build the tools and systems that make M365 Air Gapped Clouds operations faster, smarter, and more reliable. As a Software Engineer on the M365 Air Gapped Clouds team, you'll build internal tools, implement agentic workflows, and develop software solutions that accelerate delivery and improve the efficiency of M365 operations in sovereign environments. Bring your drive to innovate, and help us engineer the next generation of sovereign cloud operations.

M365 Air Gapped Clouds builds and delivers the complete Microsoft 365 portfolio in government cloud environments - Exchange, Office 365, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Purview, and Copilot. You will write and ship code across backend services that enables feature delivery and platform evolution. We invest in our people through a culture of growth mindset, innovation, collaboration, and inclusion, giving you the space to learn, take ownership, and make a real impact.

The Substrate & Security team builds the foundation that every M365 service depends on in government clouds. We develop software and tooling behind nearly every customer interaction across core search services, Copilot capabilities, infrastructure orchestration, and the protocols that connect users to their data. We also build and maintain authentication and security components that protect some of the most sensitive workloads in the world. Join us to deliver the secure, scalable platform that powers M365.

The right candidate for this job is:

• Committed to exceptional customer satisfaction through service ownership, including 24/7 on-call live-site incident response.

• Focused on writing high‑quality, maintainable code and motivated to continuously improve development, integration, and deployment processes through automation.

• Experienced with distributed systems and highly scalable services.

• A self-starter who thrives in a bottoms-up, fast-paced, and highly technical environment.

• A continuous learner who enjoys new technological challenges and is motivated to solve them through engineering excellence and innovation.

• An effective collaborator, experienced in creating technical partnerships across teams.

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

• Creates and implements code for a product, service, or feature, reusing code as applicable with minimal supervision. Writes and learns to create code that is extensible and maintainable. Considers diagnosability, reliability, and maintainability with few defects, and understands when the code is ready to be shared and delivered. Applies coding patterns and best practices to write code (e.g., leveraging state-of-the-art generative artificial intelligence [GenAI], approaches to source code organization, naming conventions).

• Acts as a designated responsible individual (DRI), working on-call to monitor a system/product feature/service for degradation, downtime, or interruptions. Alerts stakeholders as to the status and gains approval to restore system/product/service for simple problems. Responds within service level agreement (SLA) timeframe. Escalates issues to appropriate owners.

• Maintains operations of live site service, following security best practices when responding quickly to mitigate issues while using the minimum required permissions to do so that arise on a rotational, on-call basis. Identifies solutions and mitigations to simple issues and complex issues when applicable impacting performance or functionality of live site services and escalates appropriately. With minimal supervision, improves troubleshooting guides (TSGs), wikis, tests, and telemetry to make on-call better, and recommends user-facing support documentation and additional test coverage to reduce likelihood of future user-initiated incidents.

• Contributes to identifying dependencies, and incorporates them into the development of design documents for a product area with little oversight. Helps to actively identify other teams and technologies to leverage, how they interact, and where their own system or team can support others. Understands downstream interactions between systems.

• Contributes to the identification of requirements for, and development of automation within production and deployment of a complex product feature, targeting zero-touch deployment when possible. Runs code in simulated, or other non-production environments to confirm functionality and error-free runtime for products with little to no oversight.

• Works with appropriate internal stakeholders (e.g., product manager, privacy/security subject matter expert, technical lead) to understand and determine customer/user requirements for a set of features. Incorporates customer insights into future designs or solution fixes with minimal supervision.

• Remains current in skills by investing time and effort into being informed of current developments that will improve the availability, reliability, efficiency, observability, and performance of products while also driving consistency in monitoring and operations at scale. Conducts learning and literary sessions to raise awareness on relevant engineering design principles (e.g., security, testability, performance, scalability, accessibility, product knowledge) with minimal guidance.

Qualifications

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 2+ 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: Security Clearance Requirements: Candidates must be able 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:

• The successful candidate must have an active U.S. Government Top Secret Clearance with access to Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) based on a Single Scope Background Investigation (SSBI) with Polygraph. Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. Failure to maintain or obtain the appropriate U.S. Government clearance and/or customer screening requirements may result in employment action up to and including termination.

Clearance Verification :

• This position requires successful verification of the stated security clearance to meet federal government customer requirements. You will be asked to provide clearance verification information prior to an offer of employment.

Microsoft Cloud Background Check:

• This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Citizenship & Citizenship Verification:

• This position requires verification of U.S. citizenship due to citizenship-based legal restrictions. Specifically, this position supports United States federal, state, and/or local United States government agency customer and is subject to certain citizenship-based restrictions where required or permitted by applicable law. To meet this legal requirement, citizenship will be verified via a valid passport, or other approved documents, or verified US government Clearance

Preferred/Additional Qualifications

• Master'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.

Software Engineering IC3 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $100,600 - $199,000 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 $131,400 - $215,400 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:

Software Engineering IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $119,800 - $234,700 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 $158,400 - $258,000 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. (