Principal Software Engineer

Microsoft
Microsoft

Software Engineering

Redmond, WA, USA

USD 142,800-274,800 / year

Posted on Jul 28, 2026
Overview

Microsoft Cloud Hardware Infrastructure Engineering (CHIE) is the team behind Microsoft’s expanding Cloud Infrastructure and responsible for powering Microsoft’s “Intelligent Cloud” mission. CHIE delivers the core infrastructure and foundational technologies for Microsoft's over 200 online businesses including Bing, MSN, Office 365, Xbox Live, Skype, OneDrive and the Microsoft Azure platform globally with our server and data center infrastructure, security and compliance, operations, globalization, and manageability solutions. Our focus is on smart growth, high efficiency, and delivering a trusted experience to customers and partners worldwide and we are looking for passionate, high energy engineers to help achieve that mission.

As Microsoft's cloud business continues to grow the ability to deploy new offerings and HW infrastructure on time, in high volume with high quality and lowest cost is of paramount importance. To achieve this goal, the Cloud Hardware Manufacturing Engineering (CHME) team is instrumental in defining and delivering operational measures of success for hardware manufacturing, improving the planning process, quality, delivery, scale and sustainability related to Microsoft cloud hardware. We are looking for engineers with a strong passion for customer focused solutions, insight and industry knowledge to envision and implement future technical solutions that will manage and optimize the Cloud infrastructure.



Responsibilities
  • Fostering and maintaining a customer-obsessed culture.
  • Collaborating with hardware architects to determine key components and end to end verifications.
  • Envisioning, designing, developing, and delivering software that measures and improves h/w quality at scale.
  • Mentoring peers to ensure engineering best practices are code is held at a high-quality bar.
  • Solving complex problems, identifying, and driving solutions for systemic issues, creating new designs, architectures, standards and methods for large-scale distributed systems.
  • Championing a ‘can do’ attitude across the org.


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 thereafter.

Preferred Qualifications:

  • 10+ years of experience shipping, operating, improving large scale distributed systems.
  • Great problem-solving skills, with a strong bias for quality and engineering excellence.
  • Superior communications skills, verbal and written.
  • Excellent development skills in a modern programming language (C# preferred).
  • Experience with ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) tools such as Azure DevOps.
  • Firm sense of accountability and ownership for end-to-end project lifecycle.
  • Knowledge and work experience in data mining, statistics, mathematics.
  • Capable of technical deep dives into service design, operating systems, networking, and storage.
  • Experience with defining and measuring customer SLA’s.
  • Ability to build and influence broadly towards common goals and priorities through advanced impact and influence skills.

#azurehwjobs #SCHIE



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:
https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay


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.