Principal Software Engineer

About the role

Overview We are looking to welcome a Principal Software Engineer to a group of innovative, energetic and diverse engineers on the CoPilot Runtime Platform team, which is the engineering organization responsible for the foundational platform powering Microsoft 365 Copilot. We build the runtime, orchestration, data access, grounding, storage, observability, reliability, and developer infrastructure that enables AI-powered experiences across Microsoft 365. As part of the team, you will work on large-scale distributed systems, AI platform architecture, enterprise search and grounding technologies, developer frameworks, platform extensibility, reliability engineering, and next-generation Copilot experiences. Our engineers partner across Microsoft to deliver secure, scalable, and highly available AI services that serve millions of users worldwide. This role offers the opportunity to influence the future architecture of Microsoft 365 Copilot while solving challenging problems at the intersection of distributed systems, AI, search, data platforms, and cloud-scale services.

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 Partner with internal and external stakeholders to understand and incorporate user requirements and feedback into solutions. Lead architectural discussions and design of complex products, including evaluation of multiple design options, creating proposals, making design decisions, and coaching less experienced team members. Establish and promote best coding and security practices, scaling solutions to meet performance, security, and scalability needs. Partner with stakeholders to drive project and release planning while ensuring adherence to security, privacy, compliance, and operational considerations. Identify dependencies across teams and technologies, coordinate collaboration, and drive alignment on schedules and responsibilities. Serve as a designated responsible individual (DRI) for live-site incident monitoring, coordination, resolution, and prevention efforts. Maintain live service operations, implement mitigations for complex issues, improve on-call processes, and promote secure operations. Lead by example in producing extensible, maintainable, secure, well-tested code, applying coding best practices, and managing development risks. Conduct thorough code reviews ensuring adherence to standards, test coverage, security, and best practices.

Lead identification and application of AI automation, tooling and agentic approaches across the software lifecycle incorporating Responsible AI principles and SDLC engineering health measures. Stay current with Microsoft standards, industry trends and new technologies, share knowledge, and lead learning activities. Ensure compliance with security, privacy, safety, and accessibility standards, maintain audit trails, and understand regulatory requirements. Collaborate with partner teams to ensure integration, scalability, performance, and escalation pathways before release.