Principal Software Engineer, Agent Foundry (CoreAI)

The Foundry Agent Platform organization within Azure AI Platform is at the forefront of building the next generation of AI-driven solutions that power Microsoft’s most innovative products and services. Our work underpins key Azure AI offerings, enabling intelligent, scalable, and reliable AI experiences across the Microsoft ecosystem.

Within Foundry Agent Platform, our team is focused on developing advanced tools and services to build and host self-improving agents. We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to join the Agent Foundry R&D team to build the best-in-class Agent platform to enable customers to build Agents.

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

In this role, you will

• Lead the design and development of large-scale hosting infrastructure and intelligent services that transform how customers build agents.
• Shape the platform’s technical direction, drive architectural decisions, and partner with leaders across Microsoft to maximize impact. 
• Own the technical vision and architecture for scalable, secure, and agentic platform. 
• Ensure platform security, compliance, and operational excellence, including entitlement management, capacity planning, and escalation support.
• Mentor engineers, setting best practices in distributed systems, reliability, and large-scale data platform development. 
• Influence cross-org strategy by aligning platform priorities with AI training and product teams to deliver company-wide impact. 

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, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
• OR equivalent experience.
• 6+ years of experience in software engineering with a focus on distributed systems, large-scale data platforms, or cloud infrastructure. 
• 4+ years of experience working on design and delivery of complex, scalable systems. 
• 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

• Experience with Agent based architectures, frameworks and technologies (such as MCP, A2A protocol, Langchain, Azure AI Foundry)
• Proficiency in Java or Python.
• Experience with cloud services (Azure, AWS, or GCP), container orchestration (Kubernetes), and big data frameworks (e.g., Spark, Databricks). 
• Familiarity with AI/ML workflows, training data pipelines, or synthetic data generation. 
• Experience working in a large, matrixed organization and influencing at scale. 
• Experience mentoring teams and setting technical direction.
• 3+ years experience developing and deploying products or systems at multiple points in the product cycle from ideation to shipping.
• Experience building agents, working across agent frameworks and agent service.

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 posts positions 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, 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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