Principal Software Engineering

Overview

We are the Azure AI Inferencing infrastructure team that builds and runs the model-serving platform including, but not limited to, large OpenAI generative models. This team is at the forefront of delivering this innovation with massive scale powering every Azure OpenAI customer and scenario in the industry, both 3P and 1P customer like Bing and Office and solve exciting problems on the intersection of AI and Cloud.

We are looking for a Software Engineer, who is passionate about designing and building highly reliable, available platform to support model inferencing at the scale of billions of requests per day. You will be working on high throughput/low latency scenarios and drive performance optimization capabilities.

Microsoft is leading the AI strategy with an ambitious mission to democratize AI, make it an essential ingredient for delivering breakthrough customer experiences and to ensure the benefits of AI reach every person and organization on the planet, safely and responsibly. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. Join us and help shape the future of the world. 

Responsibilities

Responsibilities  :

• Lead architecture and design of complex, distributed systems; make key technical decisions and mentor engineers on design tradeoffs and best practices.
• Own solution quality end‑to‑end, including test strategy, security testing, reliability, and operational readiness.
• Drive cross‑team collaboration, identifying dependencies, resolving conflicts, and aligning delivery plans across partner teams.
• Act as DRI for live systems, leading incident response, root‑cause analysis, and prevention through automation and operational improvements.
• Champion security, privacy, compliance, and Responsible AI, establishing security invariants, auditability, and monitoring across the system.
• Lead automation and deployment excellence, enabling scalable, zero‑touch deployments with safe rollout and rollback strategies.
• Raise engineering standards, through code reviews, production-grade telemetry, performance/scalability improvements, and mentoring others
  
  

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field, or equivalent industry experience.
• 15+ years of professional software development experience, building and operating complex systems.
• Strong foundations in computer science fundamentals, including algorithms, data structures, systems design, and coding proficiency.
• Proven experience in architecture and design of large-scale software systems, including making sound technical decisions and tradeoffs.
• Demonstrated expertise in software engineering lifecycle, including design, development, testing, quality assurance, deployment, and live-site operations.
• Strong problem-solving, systems thinking, and decision-making skills with high attention to detail.
• Experience collaborating across teams, handling technical dependency management and conflict resolution.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills in English, with the ability to clearly explain complex technical concepts.
  
  

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience operating real-time, high-throughput, low-latency services in production environments.
• Hands-on experience designing, implementing, testing, and operating Azure AI or large-scale cloud services, meeting performance, scalability, reliability, and compliance requirements.
• Experience driving or contributing to engineering efficiency tools or developer productivity improvements.
• Exposure to security, compliance, and operational best practices for cloud-based or AI-driven services.
  
  

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.