Overview
The OIC team within Microsoft’s Substrate organization is looking for a Principal Software Engineer to help shape the next generation of intelligent cloud service operations.
Our team builds large-scale distributed platforms that help engineers understand the health of complex cloud services, detect and diagnose failures, and recover safely and efficiently. We are evolving service operations through advances in AI, automation, telemetry, distributed systems, and intelligent diagnosis, with the goal of improving service reliability and protecting customer experiences.
As a Principal Software Engineer, you will provide technical leadership across complex engineering problems that span multiple services and teams. You will help define architecture and technical strategy, turn ambiguous problems into scalable solutions, and influence the evolution of platforms used to operate some of Microsoft’s large-scale cloud services.
This is an opportunity to work at the intersection of distributed systems, cloud platforms, AI-assisted engineering, and large-scale service operations, while influencing technical direction across teams and organizations.
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
- Provide technical leadership for the architecture and evolution of large-scale distributed cloud platforms and services.
- Identify and solve complex, ambiguous engineering problems and translate them into clear technical strategies and scalable architectures.
- Lead the design of systems that use AI and automation to improve how cloud services are monitored, investigated, diagnosed, and operated.
- Define reusable platform capabilities, APIs, architectural patterns, and engineering standards that enable multiple teams to build and innovate efficiently.
- Drive architectural decisions across multiple services and engineering teams, balancing scalability, reliability, security, performance, extensibility, and engineering velocity.
- Partner across engineering, product management, and architecture disciplines to translate customer and business needs into long-term technical investments.
- Lead complex initiatives from early problem definition and architecture through implementation, rollout, and operational maturity.
- Establish strong engineering practices around quality, testing, observability, security, privacy, and operational excellence.
- Use production learnings and data to identify systemic improvements and influence future platform investments.
- Mentor engineers and technical leaders and raise the engineering bar through design reviews, technical guidance, and hands-on leadership.
- Build strong pa
