Principal Software Engineer - Architecture & Design

Security represents the most critical priorities for our customers in a world awash in digital threats, regulatory scrutiny, and estate complexity. Microsoft Security aspires to make the world a safer place for all. We want to reshape security and empower every user, customer, and developer with a security cloud that protects them with end to end, simplified solutions. The Microsoft Security organization accelerates Microsoft’s mission and bold ambitions to ensure that our company and industry is securing digital technology platforms, devices, and clouds in our customers’ heterogeneous environments, as well as ensuring the security of our own internal estate. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world.

We are looking to hire a Principal Software Engineer to join the Entra External ID team. Our mission is to secure and simplify external identity experiences for organizations worldwide. Entra External ID enables businesses to connect with customers, partners, and developers through secure, customizable, and scalable identity solutions. External identity is one of the fastest-growing areas in identity and access management. We face unique challenges that require innovation and deep technical expertise: 1. Customization & Extensibility: Build a platform that allows enterprises to tailor sign-up, sign-in, and user journeys to their brand and compliance needs—while maintaining security and performance at scale. 2. Sign-Up & Onboarding Experiences: Design frictionless, secure onboarding flows for millions of external users across diverse industries and geographies, balancing usability with robust authentication. 3. Developer Experience: Deliver world-class APIs, SDKs, and documentation that empower developers to integrate identity seamlessly into their apps. Our goal is to make EEID the most developer-friendly identity platform in the industry. 4. Scale & Performance: Architect services that handle 100s of millions of monthly users 5. Security & Compliance: Implement advanced authorization models (RBAC, ABAC) and zero-trust principles to protect sensitive data and meet regulatory requirements worldwide.

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.

In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop features for large scale distributed software services and solutions.
•  Communicate technical details clearly across organizational boundaries and customers.
• Adhere to modern software engineering practices through design and code reviews. 
• System design through well-defined interfaces across multiple components, code reviews, leveraging data/telemetry to make decisions.
• Develop “best-in-class” engineering for our services by ensuring that the services and the components are well-defined and modularized, secure, reliable, diagnosable, actively monitored and reusable. 
• Write clean and optimized code, improve test coverage for services, organize and implement integration tests, and resolve problem areas. Consider testability, portability/monitoring, reliability, and maintainability, and understand when code is ready to be shared and delivered.
• Gain a working understanding of Microsoft as a business and collaborate with mentors and leaders to contribute to cohesive, end-to-end experiences for our users. Focus on customer/partner needs through a data driven approach.

  Other

• Embody our culture and values 
• Embody our culture and values 

Qualifications

Required/Minimum 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#, Rust, Go, Java or C++
• OR equivalent experience.
• 6+ years of experience designing, developing, or maintaining secure software systems, with applied knowledge of authentication, data protection, access control, and secure coding practices
• 6+ years of experience designing, building, and operating scalable, highly available cloud services or distributed systems on platforms such as Azure, AWS, GCP, or comparable cloud environments, with production ownership 
• 5+ years of experience building systems with emphasis on reliability, durability, and operational efficiency, including experience with live site operations, incident response, and performance optimization.​
• 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 background and 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#, Rust, Go, Java or C++
• 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#, Rust, Go, Java or C++
• OR equivalent experience.
• 8+ years of experience designing, developing, or maintaining secure software systems, with applied knowledge of authentication, data protection, access control, and secure coding practices
• 8+ years of experience designing, building, and operating scalable, highly available cloud services or distributed systems on platforms such as Azure, AWS, GCP, or comparable cloud environments, with production ownership 
• 8+ years of experience building systems with emphasis on reliability, durability, and operational efficiency, including experience with live site operations, incident response, and performance optimization.​
• 5+ years architecting distributed systems.
• Proven experience in building scalable and reliable software solutions.
• Demonstrated ability to write clean, maintainable, and efficient code.
• Sound understanding of cloud infrastructure and services.
• Exceptional problem-solving and analytical skills: Ability to diagnose issues, identify root causes, and implement effective solutions.
• 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#, Rust, Go, Java or C++
• OR equivalent experience.

Software Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $139,900 - $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

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until October 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.  We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. 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.

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