Principal Software Engineer

We are part of the Windows Servicing and Delivery (WSD) organization in the Experiences + Devices (E+D) division. Our mission is to keep customers protected and productive by delivering a seamless and timely servicing experience across supported and future versions of Windows.

The Customer Focused Engineering (CFE) team within WSD is seeking highly motivated Principal Software Engineers to support this mission. In this role, you will work on Networking components, focusing on maintaining, securing, and improving existing platform capabilities.

You will play a key role in:

• Provide technical leadership and guidance to development teams, ensuring best practices and high standards of software quality. 
• Evaluate and recommend new technologies, tools, and processes to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the team. 
• Investigating and fixing security vulnerabilities across networking stacks.
• Addressing non-security bugs and servicing issues that impact customer environments.
• Reproducing and resolving customer-reported incidents (ICMs) in collaboration with support and product teams.
• Driving engineering quality and compliance through rigorous debugging and validation.
• Ensuring reliable, regression-free fixes across diverse hardware, protocol stacks, and deployment scenarios.

This role is ideal for engineers who enjoy deep system-level debugging, protocol correctness, and delivering impact at scale by keeping the Windows ecosystem secure and reliable for millions of users.

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

• Provide technical leadership and guidance to development teams, ensuring best practices and high standards of software quality. 
• Evaluate and recommend new technologies, tools, and processes to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the team. 
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including engineering, product management, and operations, to define and implement architectural solutions that meet business requirements. 
• Conduct code reviews and provide feedback to ensure adherence to architectural standards and best practices. 
• Mentor and coach engineers, fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvement. 
• Ensure the scalability, performance, and security of the software systems developed by the WSD team. 
• Investigate and fix security vulnerabilities in Networking components, ensuring all related variants are addressed.
• Reproduce, debug, and resolve customer-reported issues (ICMs) across a wide range of print and networking configurations.
• Deliver high-quality, compatible fixes with minimal risk to system stability or application behavior.
• Address non-security bugs as part of regular servicing commitments for supported Windows releases.
• Collaborate with escalation engineers, support teams, and feature owners to drive resolution of complex issues.
• Maintain strong engineering standards through code inspection, validation, and testing practices.
• Continuously look for opportunities to improve servicing tools, diagnostics, and triage processes.
• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to junior team members.

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.
• OR equivalent experience.
• Solid debugging and problem-solving skills, especially in multi-threaded, system-level applications.
• Experience with Windows system-level programming, ideally in areas related to networking protocols, network security, container networking
• Familiarity with Windows debugging tools (e.g., WinDbg, trace logs, protocol analyzers like Wireshark).
• Proven ability to understand and troubleshoot unfamiliar codebases.
• Solid verbal and written communication skills.
• Ability to work across global teams and collaborate in a diverse, team-oriented environment.

Preferred Qualifications:

• 12+ years of professional software development experience.
• Proficiency in C or C++, with experience working in large and complex codebases

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.

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