Role at a glance
- Job function
-
Software Engineering & IT Software Engineering
- Salary
- $119.8K – $261K/yr
- Location
- Redmond, Washington, United States
- Work arrangement
- On-site
- Employment
- Full-time
- Experience
- Senior Level 4+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR equivalent experience.
- Education
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 4+ years technical engineering experience
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Role Summary
This Senior Software Engineer role is a hands-on engineering position focused on building platform capabilities that make building and running software simpler for engineering teams. The work centers on designing and building production distributed systems, applying AI to engineering workflows, and shaping technical direction through design reviews.
What You'll Do
- Contribute to the platform roadmap by finding gaps, proposing architectural improvements, and linking designs to the needs of...
- Build AI-assisted and agent-based features for troubleshooting, testing, migrations, and operational analysis, with evaluations and...
- Work with partner teams to turn common problems into self-service platform features
- Build automated validation, progressive rollout, observability, and recovery tools that let teams deliver safely
- Deliver significant platform features from design through implementation, adoption, and ongoing operation
- Collaborate on priorities and technical tradeoffs, and help raise the engineering bar through code quality, design reviews, and mentoring
Generated from the employer's posting. Verify important details before applying.
View full postingQualifications
Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience with 4+ years of coding-focused engineering experience, plus distributed systems and platform skills.
Required
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 4+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages...
- Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements
- Pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter
Preferred
- Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 6+ years technical engineering experience, or Bachelor's Degree in...
- Experience designing, building, and operating distributed systems or shared platform services in production
- Experience building platform components or developer tools used by multiple teams that improved engineering productivity, service...
- Hands-on experience integrating large language models or agents into engineering workflows, including tool integration, evaluation,...
- Experience building interfaces and workflows that work for both human developers and AI agents, with clear contracts, discoverable...
- Depth in at least one platform area, such as service frameworks, data infrastructure, observability, CI/CD, experimentation,...
- Experience using telemetry, profiling, and production investigations to find bottlenecks and deliver measurable performance or cost...
- Experience modernizing existing systems through incremental changes and migrations without disrupting customers or partners
Original job description
Content provided by the employer
Original job description
Content provided by the employer
Build the platform that helps every engineering team work better
We're hiring a Senior Software Engineer with strong distributed systems skills and a real interest in applying AI to engineering problems. You'll help build the next generation of our platform. Our goal is to make building and running software much simpler. That means turning complex infrastructure into capabilities that are easy to use, making reliability and security the default, and using AI to remove the work that slows engineers down.
Your work will reach well beyond a single service or feature. The components you build, the abstractions you help design, and the practices you help set will let teams ship better products faster and with more confidence. You'll work on hard problems in scalability, performance, observability, and developer experience. You'll also look for ways that intelligent automation can change how the platform is built and run.
This is a hands-on engineering role. You'll design and build production systems, own significant parts of the platform from end to end, and help shape technical direction through design reviews and collaboration with partner teams. You'll take ideas from early prototypes through to production use, and you'll help raise the bar for the engineers around you. We want someone who questions the usual way of doing things, sees opportunities in operational overhead, and pairs ambition with the discipline to build reliable systems. If you want to build technology that makes other engineers more productive, and help define platform engineering in an AI-enabled world, this role is for you.
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
Help shape technical direction. Contribute to the platform roadmap by finding gaps, proposing architectural improvements, and linking your designs to the most important needs of engineering teams.
• Apply AI to real engineering problems. Build AI-assisted and agent-based features for workflows like troubleshooting, testing, migrations, and operational analysis. Add evaluations and safeguards so engineers can trust the results.
• Treat the platform as a product. Work with partner teams to understand where they get stuck, test solutions with them, and turn common problems into self-service features that engineers want to use.
• Make safe delivery easier. Build automated validation, progressive rollout, observability, and recovery tools that let teams move fast without adding risk to production.
• Own your work end to end. Deliver significant platform features from design through implementation, adoption, and ongoing operation. Measure success by developer experience, reliability, performance, and cost.
• Collaborate across teams. Work with engineers and stakeholders on priorities and technical tradeoffs, help clarify ambiguous problems, and contribute to shared approaches that let teams evolve independently.
• Raise the engineering bar. Write high-quality code, take an active part in design reviews, mentor other engineers, and help build a culture of curiosity, accountability, and continuous improvement.
Qualifications
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 4+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
- 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.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Master'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 Bachelor'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 equivalent experience.
- Experience designing, building, and operating distributed systems or shared platform services in production.
- Experience building platform components or developer tools used by multiple teams that improved engineering productivity, service reliability, or operational efficiency.
- Hands-on experience integrating large language models or agents into engineering workflows, including tool integration, evaluation, permission boundaries, and human oversight.
- Experience building interfaces and workflows that work for both human developers and AI agents, with clear contracts, discoverable capabilities, and auditable execution.
- Depth in at least one platform area, such as service frameworks, data infrastructure, observability, CI/CD, experimentation, configuration management, or cloud infrastructure.
- Experience using telemetry, profiling, and production investigations to find bottlenecks and deliver measurable performance or cost improvements.
- Experience modernizing existing systems through incremental changes and migrations without disrupting customers or partners.
- A record of balancing exploration with practical delivery, turning promising prototypes into supported, production-ready platform features.
- Solid systems engineering fundamentals, including API design, concurrency, data management, failure handling, and performance analysis.
- An AI-forward engineering mindset: the ability to spot useful ways to apply AI, build them into production code, and judge how correct, secure, reliable, and cost-effective they are.
- A record of delivering complex technical projects from design through production, including making sound design decisions and working with other teams to get features adopted.
- Ability to turn ambiguous requirements and developer needs into practical, maintainable technical solutions.
- Solid communication and collaboration skills, including explaining technical tradeoffs clearly, contributing to design discussions, and helping other engineers grow.
Software Engineering IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $119,800 - $234,700 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 $160,200 - $261,000 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.
About the company
Microsoft
Large Enterprise
Microsoft is a global technology leader that empowers individuals and organizations to achieve more through innovative software, services, and devices. Founded in 1975, the company is best known for its flagship products like the Windows operating system and Microsoft Office suite. In addition to personal computing, Microsoft is a leader in cloud computing with its Azure platform, providing a range of solutions for businesses to enhance productivity and efficiency. With a strong commitment to sustainability and accessibility, Microsoft continues to drive technological advancements that shape the future of work and learning.