Principal Software Engineer

Improvements delivered by this team benefit thousands of developers and millions of build actions.

As a Principal Software Engineer on the Windows Engineering Systems Build team, you will: Define and drive the technical strategy and architecture for foundational build tools, services, and engineering workflows used across Windows and partner organizations.

Lead multi-quarter initiatives that modernize critical engineering systems while improving reliability, performance, security, maintainability, observability, and developer experience.

Identify systemic opportunities across the engineering ecosystem and translate ambiguous business, developer, and operational needs into clear technical direction and durable platform investments.

Design and deliver solutions across build orchestration, distributed execution, caching, compilers, toolchains, dependency management, artifact production, diagnostics, and engineering infrastructure.

Diagnose complex and high-impact failures across organizational and technology boundaries, driving investigations from initial evidence through root cause, remediation, and prevention.

Establish architectural principles, engineering standards, and technical decision frameworks that enable teams to evolve critical systems safely and consistently.

Partner with Windows product teams, security organizations, and Engineering Systems teams to integrate new capabilities while protecting compatibility, scale, and operational continuity.

Establish measurable success criteria, telemetry, and operational signals that make reliability, performance, adoption, regressions, and customer impact visible.

Advance secure software-supply-chain practices, including dependency governance, provenance, artifact integrity, policy enforcement, and compliance automation.

Provide technical leadership during significant operational events, helping teams understand failure modes, make sound tradeoffs, and implement systemic reliability improvements.

Use and advance AI-assisted engineering workflows for investigation, implementation, review, diagnostics, and operational response while maintaining rigorous validation, security, and engineering judgment.

Influence technical decisions across teams and organizations by clearly communicating architecture, risks, tradeoffs, priorities, and long-term consequences to both technical and nontechnical audiences.

Develop and mentor engineers and technical leaders through architecture and code reviews, debugging, project leadership, career development, and thoughtful delegation of technical ownership.

Multiply the effectiveness of the broader engineering organization by creating reusable designs, tools, diagnostics, documentation, and engineering practices.

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.

Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 10+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Python, or TypeScript.

OR bachelor's degree in computer science or related technical field AND 12+ years technical engineering experience with coding in those languages.

OR equivalent experience.

defining architecture and technical strategy for complex systems used by multiple teams or organizations.

with Windows internals, native software development, and build technologies such as C++, C#, PowerShell, MSBuild, BuildXL, Bazel, distributed build execution, or distributed caching.

with developer infrastructure, build systems, compilers, CI/CD platforms, dependency management, or large-scale distributed services, including Azure DevOps pipelines, GitHub Actions, or comparable technologies.

designing, building, operating, or modernizing critical software and production services at scale, including incident response, reliability, security, performance, and compatibility considerations.

using telemetry and diagnostic technologies such as Kusto Query Language (KQL), Azure Data Explorer, Application Insights, or comparable technologies to troubleshoot complex systems and improve reliability or developer productivity.

Demonstrated ability to lead complex technical initiatives across organizational boundaries and influence architecture, engineering practices, and investment decisions without direct authority.

Demonstrated ability to communicate complex technical decisions, risks, and tradeoffs to engineering leaders, partner teams, and other stakeholders.

developing engineers and technical leaders, creating clarity in ambiguous situations, and raising engineering capability across a team or organization.

Knowledge of secure development and software-supply-chain practices, including dependency governance, provenance, artifact integrity, compliance, and security automation.

applying AI-assisted development technologies responsibly to improve engineering quality, investigation, diagnostics, or productivity.

Track record of converting recurring operational or developer problems into scalable platform improvements, diagnostics, automation, or engineering guardrails.

designing, building, and delivering complex software systems, developer infrastructure, or production services.

leading technical projects or initiatives that span multiple components, teams, or organizations.

providing technical leadership, developing other engineers, and driving execution across complex engineering initiatives.