Principal Software Engineer

Within the Developer Division at Microsoft, the Developer AI team is working on incubating, building and delivering the next generation of AI-enabled developer tooling experiences, across GitHub and Copilot clients.

The DevDiv Developer AI team is looking for a Principal Engineering with a deep interest and passion for the intersection of developer tooling and modern generative AI systems, and a drive to invent the future of AI-enabled software development. 

Our team builds platforms, products and features delivered into GitHub Copilot inside GitHub and other Copilot client tools to empower and accelerate software development.

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

Coding

• Leads by example across teams and mentors others to produce extensible, maintainable, well-tested, secure, and performant code used across products that adheres to design specifications.
• Leads efforts to continuously improve code performance, testability, maintainability, effectiveness, and cost, while learning about and accounting for relevant trade-offs. Identifies best practices and coding patterns (e.g., leveraging state-of-the-art generative artificial intelligence [GenAI], approaches to source code organization, naming conventions) and provides deep expertise in the coding and validation strategy. Creates and applies metrics to drive code quality and stability, appropriate coding patterns, and best practices.

Design

• Owns and leads efforts and discussions for the architecture of aspects of complex products/solutions (e.g., design, cost).
• Leads the testing and exploration of various design options across a set of complex product/solution scenarios, ensuring the strengths and weaknesses of each option are outlined and making recommendations for which design option is best.
• Creates proposals for architecture and design documents, and leads testing of hypotheses and proposed complex solutions.
• Shares and acts on findings from investigations, owns design decisions, and oversees the less experienced team members. Leads the development of design documents that support user stories and other product requirements.

 Engineering Excellence

• Applies and identifies best practices and shares information with other engineers for building code based on well-established methods and secure design principles while also applying best practices for new code development and formal validation of security invariants. Leads product development and scaling to customer requirements and applies best practices for meeting scaling needs and performance expectations and security promises.
• Remains current by investing time and effort into being informed staying abreast of current developments. Proactively seeks new knowledge, evaluating new trends, technical solutions, and patterns, assessing how to adapt them to current problems, and shares knowledge with other engineers. Conducts learning and literary sessions to raise awareness on relevant engineering design principles (e.g., security, testability, performance, scalability, accessibility, product knowledge).

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
• 4+ years experience designing, building, and operating production-grade software and services at scale, with a proven track record of delivering high-impact solutions.
• OR equivalent experience. 

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.

Additional or preferred qualifications

• Master'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 Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 12+ 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 IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across Canada is CAD $142,400 - CAD $257,500 per year.

• Find additional pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/canada-pay-information.html
• Microsoft will accept applications for the role until September 23, 2025

 

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.