Shanghai, China

Principal Software Engineer–M365 Foundation Team

Location
Shanghai, China
Job Number
200046216-en-2
City
Shanghai
Team
M365 Core
Country
China
Discipline
Software Engineering

Overview

We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer to help lead the strategic evolution of the Enterprise Configuration System team, Microsoft’s platform for safe, scalable, intelligent, and resilient configuration management.As a Principal Software Engineer in the Enterprise Configuration System team, you will be accountable for broad technical direction across a major platform area or cross-team initiative. You will lead complex architecture from ideation to production, create clarity across teams, drive multi-release technical strategy, and influence engineering practices across the Enterprise Configuration System team and partner organizations.This role is for a technical leader who can operate in ambiguous problem spaces, broker difficult cross-team architecture decisions, and change the momentum of current plans toward higher-impact outcomes. You will help the platform evolve into an agentic-native Continuous Configuration platform for Microsoft services, combining distributed systems expertise, operational excellence, AI-native development, and customer-focused platform strategy.

About the Enterprise Configuration System TeamThis team builds Microsoft’s enterprise configuration platform, used by Microsoft services to manage safe configuration delivery, controlled rollout, feature rollout, policy enforcement, telemetry, reliability, authenticated access, and operational governance at scale.The platform is transforming from a traditional configuration platform into an intelligent, agentic-native infrastructure layer. The team is investing in AI-assisted engineering, MCP interfaces, agent-powered troubleshooting, autonomous validation, self-healing workflows, configuration intelligence, and compliance automation to help Microsoft services move faster while reducing operational risk.

Why Join UsThis is a great opportunity to shape a foundational Microsoft platform at the moment when configuration management, AI-native engineering, service reliability, and agentic automation are converging. As a Principal Software Engineer in the Enterprise Configuration System team, you will help define the next generation of Continuous Configuration for Microsoft, influencing how services safely ship, validate, diagnose, and recover at global scale. You will work on deeply technical, high-impact problems with broad customer reach, influence cross-team strategy, and help build an engineering system where agents and humans collaborate to deliver safer, faster, and more intelligent platform outcomes.

Responsibilities

  • Strategic Technical Leadership: Define and drive the architecture, roadmap, and execution strategy for a major ECS platform area or cross-team initiative with multi-release impact.

  • Cross-Team Architecture Ownership: Broker complex architecture decisions across ECS, partner teams, PM, security, compliance, and service owners; create shared direction and durable technical alignment.

  • Agentic-Native Platform Transformation: Lead the design and adoption of agentic-native engineering systems, including AI coding agents, MCP interfaces, SKILLs, intelligent automation, and AI-native engineering practices such as harness engineering, loop engineering, and evaluation systems.

  • Technical Vision & Long-Term Direction: Translate ambiguous customer, business, security, reliability, and operational needs into clear technical bets, phased execution plans, and measurable outcomes.

  • Platform Quality & Engineering Excellence: Define quality metrics, coding patterns, validation strategy, telemetry, observability, and operational readiness standards that raise the engineering bar across ECS.

  • Complex Problem Resolution: Resolve the hardest technical and product-system problems in ECS, including issues spanning distributed systems, scale, reliability, security, compliance, and cross-service dependencies.

  • Customer & Partner Influence: Build trusted technical relationships with major partner teams and use customer insights, production signals, and platform adoption data to improve ECS strategy and design.

  • Organizational Impact: Change the momentum of existing plans where needed, identify higher-impact directions, and help teams pivot toward better customer and business outcomes.

  • Mentorship & Capability Building: Mentor senior engineers and tech leads, build durable technical capability across the team, and create an inclusive engineering environment where people can do their best work.

  • Operational Accountability: Ensure ECS platform investments are designed for production excellence, measurable customer impact, cost awareness, reliability, security, and long-term maintainability.

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.
  • Proven experience leading architecture and delivery of large-scale cloud services, distributed systems, or platform infrastructure across multiple teams.
  • Deep technical expertise in service architecture, reliability engineering, distributed systems, telemetry, security, scalability, and production operations.
  • Demonstrated ability to lead complex cross-team initiatives, create clarity in ambiguous problem spaces, and influence senior technical stakeholders.
  • Solid coding and design judgment, with a track record of delivering simple, maintainable, high-quality technical solutions.
  • Experience adopting or leading AI-assisted development, agentic workflows, automation platforms, or intelligent engineering systems.
 

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:

  • 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, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
    • 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, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python 
    • OR equivalent experience. 
  • Experience with configuration management, experimentation platforms, feature rollout systems, policy engines, SDKs, service control planes, or large-scale developer platforms.
  • Experience defining multi-year technical strategy, architecture direction, or engineering standards across product groups.
  • Experience with Copilot, AI agents, MCP, SKILLs, autonomous troubleshooting, self-healing systems, AI-native platform engineering, harness engineering, loop engineering, evaluation platforms, or agentic software development frameworks.
  • Proven ability to drive reliability, compliance, security, and operational excellence for mission-critical services.
  • Solid ability to synthesize production data, customer feedback, and business priorities into actionable technical strategy.
  • Experience mentoring senior engineers, growing technical leaders, and shaping engineering culture.
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills, especially for executive-level technical narratives, design reviews, and cross-org decision making.

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.

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Principal Software Engineer–M365 Foundation Team

Location
Shanghai, China
Job Number
200046216-en-4
City
Shanghai
Team
M365 Core
Country
China
Discipline
Software Engineering

Overview

We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer to help lead the strategic evolution of the Enterprise Configuration System team, Microsoft’s platform for safe, scalable, intelligent, and resilient configuration management.As a Principal Software Engineer in the Enterprise Configuration System team, you will be accountable for broad technical direction across a major platform area or cross-team initiative. You will lead complex architecture from ideation to production, create clarity across teams, drive multi-release technical strategy, and influence engineering practices across the Enterprise Configuration System team and partner organizations.This role is for a technical leader who can operate in ambiguous problem spaces, broker difficult cross-team architecture decisions, and change the momentum of current plans toward higher-impact outcomes. You will help the platform evolve into an agentic-native Continuous Configuration platform for Microsoft services, combining distributed systems expertise, operational excellence, AI-native development, and customer-focused platform strategy.

About the Enterprise Configuration System TeamThis team builds Microsoft’s enterprise configuration platform, used by Microsoft services to manage safe configuration delivery, controlled rollout, feature rollout, policy enforcement, telemetry, reliability, authenticated access, and operational governance at scale.The platform is transforming from a traditional configuration platform into an intelligent, agentic-native infrastructure layer. The team is investing in AI-assisted engineering, MCP interfaces, agent-powered troubleshooting, autonomous validation, self-healing workflows, configuration intelligence, and compliance automation to help Microsoft services move faster while reducing operational risk.

Why Join UsThis is a great opportunity to shape a foundational Microsoft platform at the moment when configuration management, AI-native engineering, service reliability, and agentic automation are converging. As a Principal Software Engineer in the Enterprise Configuration System team, you will help define the next generation of Continuous Configuration for Microsoft, influencing how services safely ship, validate, diagnose, and recover at global scale. You will work on deeply technical, high-impact problems with broad customer reach, influence cross-team strategy, and help build an engineering system where agents and humans collaborate to deliver safer, faster, and more intelligent platform outcomes.

Responsibilities

  • Strategic Technical Leadership: Define and drive the architecture, roadmap, and execution strategy for a major ECS platform area or cross-team initiative with multi-release impact.

  • Cross-Team Architecture Ownership: Broker complex architecture decisions across ECS, partner teams, PM, security, compliance, and service owners; create shared direction and durable technical alignment.

  • Agentic-Native Platform Transformation: Lead the design and adoption of agentic-native engineering systems, including AI coding agents, MCP interfaces, SKILLs, intelligent automation, and AI-native engineering practices such as harness engineering, loop engineering, and evaluation systems.

  • Technical Vision & Long-Term Direction: Translate ambiguous customer, business, security, reliability, and operational needs into clear technical bets, phased execution plans, and measurable outcomes.

  • Platform Quality & Engineering Excellence: Define quality metrics, coding patterns, validation strategy, telemetry, observability, and operational readiness standards that raise the engineering bar across ECS.

  • Complex Problem Resolution: Resolve the hardest technical and product-system problems in ECS, including issues spanning distributed systems, scale, reliability, security, compliance, and cross-service dependencies.

  • Customer & Partner Influence: Build trusted technical relationships with major partner teams and use customer insights, production signals, and platform adoption data to improve ECS strategy and design.

  • Organizational Impact: Change the momentum of existing plans where needed, identify higher-impact directions, and help teams pivot toward better customer and business outcomes.

  • Mentorship & Capability Building: Mentor senior engineers and tech leads, build durable technical capability across the team, and create an inclusive engineering environment where people can do their best work.

  • Operational Accountability: Ensure ECS platform investments are designed for production excellence, measurable customer impact, cost awareness, reliability, security, and long-term maintainability.

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.
  • Proven experience leading architecture and delivery of large-scale cloud services, distributed systems, or platform infrastructure across multiple teams.
  • Deep technical expertise in service architecture, reliability engineering, distributed systems, telemetry, security, scalability, and production operations.
  • Demonstrated ability to lead complex cross-team initiatives, create clarity in ambiguous problem spaces, and influence senior technical stakeholders.
  • Solid coding and design judgment, with a track record of delivering simple, maintainable, high-quality technical solutions.
  • Experience adopting or leading AI-assisted development, agentic workflows, automation platforms, or intelligent engineering systems.
 

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:

  • 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, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
    • 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, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python 
    • OR equivalent experience. 
  • Experience with configuration management, experimentation platforms, feature rollout systems, policy engines, SDKs, service control planes, or large-scale developer platforms.
  • Experience defining multi-year technical strategy, architecture direction, or engineering standards across product groups.
  • Experience with Copilot, AI agents, MCP, SKILLs, autonomous troubleshooting, self-healing systems, AI-native platform engineering, harness engineering, loop engineering, evaluation platforms, or agentic software development frameworks.
  • Proven ability to drive reliability, compliance, security, and operational excellence for mission-critical services.
  • Solid ability to synthesize production data, customer feedback, and business priorities into actionable technical strategy.
  • Experience mentoring senior engineers, growing technical leaders, and shaping engineering culture.
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills, especially for executive-level technical narratives, design reviews, and cross-org decision making.

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.

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Sr. Software Engineer–M365 Foundation Team

Location
Shanghai, China
Job Number
200046213-en-2
City
Shanghai
Team
M365 Core
Country
China
Discipline
Software Engineering

Overview

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join the Enterprise Configuration System team and help lead the next generation of Microsoft’s safe, scalable, and resilient enterprise configuration platform.As a Senior Software Engineer in the Enterprise Configuration System team, you will often serve as the technical lead for a feature crew or major platform area. You will own complex technical problems end-to-end, define architecture and execution strategy, mentor engineers, influence partner teams, and drive outcomes that improve platform reliability, customer experience, and engineering velocity.This role requires strong technical judgment, strategic thinking, and the ability to create clarity in ambiguous problem spaces. You will be expected to go beyond implementation and shape how the team designs, validates, operates, and evolves enterprise configuration platform capabilities.

About the Enterprise Configuration System TeamThis team is responsible for Microsoft’s enterprise configuration platform, enabling safe rollout, continuous configuration delivery, policy-driven governance, telemetry, and resilient configuration consumption across Microsoft 365 and broader Microsoft workloads.The team operates at the intersection of distributed systems, live-site reliability, security, compliance, and AI-native engineering. The team is transforming the platform into an agentic-native Continuous Configuration system by integrating AI coding agents, operational agents, MCP interfaces, automated validation, intelligent troubleshooting, and self-healing workflows into the platform and engineering process.

Why Join UsThis role gives you the opportunity to lead meaningful platform work at Microsoft scale. As a Senior Software Engineer in the Enterprise Configuration System team, you will shape critical configuration infrastructure, improve how Microsoft services safely roll out change, and help define the team’s agentic-native engineering model. You will work on high-impact problems where strong technical leadership, customer empathy, and operational excellence directly translate into safer and faster service delivery across Microsoft.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

  • Technical Leadership: Serve as a technical lead for a feature crew or major ECS platform area, driving architecture, execution strategy, design quality, and delivery outcomes.

  • Strategic Feature Ownership: Own high-impact ECS capabilities across multiple releases, building roadmaps, evaluating progress, and ensuring investments deliver measurable product, customer, and business value.

  • Complex Problem Solving: Scope and resolve technically complex and ambiguous problems requiring cross-team alignment, architectural judgment, and sustained execution.

  • Agentic-Native Engineering: Lead adoption of AI-assisted and agentic development practices across the crew, including coding agents, MCP-based automation, SKILLs, automated validation, operational intelligence, and modern AI-native engineering practices and evaluation-driven development.

  • Architecture & Design Quality: Develop elegant, resilient, and maintainable designs; improve others’ design specs; ensure solutions align with long-term ECS architecture.

  • Reliability & Observability: Define telemetry, health signals, validation strategy, dashboards, and operational readiness criteria for major ECS capabilities.

  • Engineering Lifecycle Improvements: Improve the team’s engineering lifecycle, including design reviews, test strategy, CI/CD, incident learnings, release quality, and production readiness.

  • Customer & Partner Engagement: Represent ECS in technical discussions with partner teams and customers, translate pain points into platform improvements, and drive alignment across teams.

  • Mentorship & Culture: Mentor engineers, model strong engineering practices, improve team culture, and help others increase technical depth and execution quality.

  • Risk Management: Identify problems several steps ahead, manage dependencies, make informed tradeoffs, and know when to ship, hold, pivot, or escalate.

Qualifications

Required 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. 
  • Proven experience leading design and delivery of complex cloud services, distributed systems, or large-scale platform capabilities.
  • Solid proficiency in one or more programming languages such as C#, Java, Python, TypeScript, Go, or Rust.
  • Experience with production service operations, telemetry, reliability engineering, incident analysis, and service quality improvements.
  • Demonstrated ability to lead technical discussions, mentor engineers, and influence decisions across teams.
  • Experience working with AI-assisted development, agentic workflows, automation frameworks, or intelligent engineering tools.
 

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:

  • 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 with large-scale configuration systems, experimentation platforms, feature rollout, policy enforcement, SDKs, or control-plane infrastructure.
  • Experience leading cross-team initiatives involving service reliability, security, compliance, or platform modernization.
  • Solid understanding of distributed systems design, scalability, fault tolerance, caching, service authentication, and observability.
  • Experience building automation-first operational systems, self-healing workflows, or intelligent troubleshooting experiences.
  • Ability to communicate complex technical issues clearly to engineering leaders, PMs, partner teams, and customers.
  • Demonstrated record of improving engineering practices, driving technical excellence, and developing others.
  • Familiarity with AI-native engineering practices such as harness engineering, loop engineering, evaluation systems, agent orchestration, or automated software development workflows.

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.

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Job Number
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Overview

AI-Native Systems, Storage & Data Platform Architecture

We are seeking a highly technical Principal Software Engineer to drive the next generation of AI-native architecture across critical storage, database, and distributed system components. This role will lead the modernization and transformation of foundational platform technologies that power large-scale cloud services and AI workloads.

The ideal candidate possesses deep expertise in systems programming, storage architecture, distributed databases, and high-performance service design. They combine strong critical thinking with an AI-native mindset, leveraging AI not only as a productivity tool, but as a catalyst to fundamentally rethink system architecture, engineering workflows, performance optimization, reliability, and operational excellence.

This role requires both hands-on technical depth and strategic influence, shaping technologies that operate at hyperscale while delivering industry-leading reliability, scalability, efficiency, and latency characteristics.

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

System Architecture & Platform Leadership

  • Lead the architecture, design, and evolution of large-scale distributed storage, database, and data platform systems.

  • Drive modernization of critical platform components to support next-generation AI and Copilot workloads.

  • Re-architect legacy services and infrastructure using AI-native design principles.

  • Define long-term technical strategy and architectural direction across multiple services and teams.

  • Identify and eliminate architectural bottlenecks impacting scalability, reliability, performance, and operational efficiency.

Systems Programming & Performance Engineering

  • Design and implement highly efficient systems-level software in languages such as C++, Rust, C#, Go, or similar.

  • Drive end-to-end performance optimization across storage engines, networking, caching, concurrency control, and data access layers.

  • Solve complex challenges involving high concurrency, low latency, throughput optimization, and resource efficiency.

  • Lead root-cause analysis and resolution of difficult production issues involving distributed systems and storage infrastructure.

  • Establish engineering standards and best practices for performance-critical software development.

Storage & Database Innovation

  • Design and optimize storage engines, database architectures, replication technologies, indexing systems, and data management frameworks.

  • Lead innovation in areas such as:

    • High availability and disaster recovery

    • Data durability and consistency

    • Replication and synchronization

    • Metadata management

    • Query optimization

    • Storage efficiency and cost optimization

    • Intelligent caching and tiering

  • Drive architectural improvements that enable large-scale AI and retrieval-driven workloads.

AI-Native Transformation

  • Champion AI-native engineering practices across architecture, development, testing, and operations.

  • Apply AI-assisted approaches to system design, performance analysis, reliability engineering, and operational automation.

  • Identify opportunities to redesign products and platforms around emerging AI capabilities instead of incrementally enhancing legacy models.

  • Build frameworks and workflows that integrate AI into engineering decision-making and operational management.

  • Influence the organization’s AI transformation strategy through thought leadership and technical innovation.

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.
  • Extensive industry experience building large-scale cloud services, distributed systems, storage platforms, or database systems.
  • Solid understanding of operating systems, memory management, threading, synchronization, networking, and I/O subsystems.
  • Expert knowledge of distributed system design and architecture.
  • Proven experience designing or operating large-scale storage and database platforms.
  • Solid understanding of storage engines, database internals, replication mechanisms, transaction processing, consistency models, fault tolerance, high availability architectures, and data durability strategies.
  • Experience with large-scale data platforms supporting mission-critical workloads.
  • Demonstrated success building systems that operate at hyperscale.
  • Experience designing and supporting high-concurrency architectures, low-latency services, and high-throughput systems, with expertise in service resiliency, performance tuning, capacity management, and production operations.
  • Ability to diagnose and resolve problems across complex distributed environments.
  • Solid interest and demonstrated experience applying AI to engineering workflows and product architectures.
  • Ability to critically evaluate emerging AI technologies and identify transformational opportunities.
  • Experience using AI-assisted development, design, diagnostics, automation, or operational workflows.
  • Passion for reimagining platforms and engineering systems through AI-driven innovation.
  • Exceptional analytical and problem-solving skills.
  • Ability to navigate ambiguity and drive clarity in highly complex technical domains.
  • Solid architecture review and design evaluation skills.
  • Proven influence across organizations without direct authority.
  • Excellent communication and collaboration skills with engineers, architects, product leaders, and executives.

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:

  • 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, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
    • 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, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python 
    • OR equivalent experience. 
  • Experience building storage or database systems supporting AI, search, retrieval, vector, or large-scale analytics workloads.
  • Expertise in cloud-scale platforms such as Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud.
  • Experience with modern database technologies (distributed SQL, NoSQL, vector databases, or analytical engines).
  • Deep familiarity with observability, telemetry, reliability engineering, and automated operations.
  • Contributions to open-source systems, storage technologies, databases, or distributed computing frameworks.
  • Track record of leading major platform transformations with significant business impact.

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.

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Location
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Job Number
200046413-en-4
City
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Team
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Discipline
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Overview

AI-Native Systems, Storage & Data Platform Architecture

We are seeking a highly technical Principal Software Engineer to drive the next generation of AI-native architecture across critical storage, database, and distributed system components. This role will lead the modernization and transformation of foundational platform technologies that power large-scale cloud services and AI workloads.

The ideal candidate possesses deep expertise in systems programming, storage architecture, distributed databases, and high-performance service design. They combine strong critical thinking with an AI-native mindset, leveraging AI not only as a productivity tool, but as a catalyst to fundamentally rethink system architecture, engineering workflows, performance optimization, reliability, and operational excellence.

This role requires both hands-on technical depth and strategic influence, shaping technologies that operate at hyperscale while delivering industry-leading reliability, scalability, efficiency, and latency characteristics.

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

System Architecture & Platform Leadership

  • Lead the architecture, design, and evolution of large-scale distributed storage, database, and data platform systems.

  • Drive modernization of critical platform components to support next-generation AI and Copilot workloads.

  • Re-architect legacy services and infrastructure using AI-native design principles.

  • Define long-term technical strategy and architectural direction across multiple services and teams.

  • Identify and eliminate architectural bottlenecks impacting scalability, reliability, performance, and operational efficiency.

Systems Programming & Performance Engineering

  • Design and implement highly efficient systems-level software in languages such as C++, Rust, C#, Go, or similar.

  • Drive end-to-end performance optimization across storage engines, networking, caching, concurrency control, and data access layers.

  • Solve complex challenges involving high concurrency, low latency, throughput optimization, and resource efficiency.

  • Lead root-cause analysis and resolution of difficult production issues involving distributed systems and storage infrastructure.

  • Establish engineering standards and best practices for performance-critical software development.

Storage & Database Innovation

  • Design and optimize storage engines, database architectures, replication technologies, indexing systems, and data management frameworks.

  • Lead innovation in areas such as:

    • High availability and disaster recovery

    • Data durability and consistency

    • Replication and synchronization

    • Metadata management

    • Query optimization

    • Storage efficiency and cost optimization

    • Intelligent caching and tiering

  • Drive architectural improvements that enable large-scale AI and retrieval-driven workloads.

AI-Native Transformation

  • Champion AI-native engineering practices across architecture, development, testing, and operations.

  • Apply AI-assisted approaches to system design, performance analysis, reliability engineering, and operational automation.

  • Identify opportunities to redesign products and platforms around emerging AI capabilities instead of incrementally enhancing legacy models.

  • Build frameworks and workflows that integrate AI into engineering decision-making and operational management.

  • Influence the organization’s AI transformation strategy through thought leadership and technical innovation.

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.
  • Extensive industry experience building large-scale cloud services, distributed systems, storage platforms, or database systems.
  • Solid understanding of operating systems, memory management, threading, synchronization, networking, and I/O subsystems.
  • Expert knowledge of distributed system design and architecture.
  • Proven experience designing or operating large-scale storage and database platforms.
  • Solid understanding of storage engines, database internals, replication mechanisms, transaction processing, consistency models, fault tolerance, high availability architectures, and data durability strategies.
  • Experience with large-scale data platforms supporting mission-critical workloads.
  • Demonstrated success building systems that operate at hyperscale.
  • Experience designing and supporting high-concurrency architectures, low-latency services, and high-throughput systems, with expertise in service resiliency, performance tuning, capacity management, and production operations.
  • Ability to diagnose and resolve problems across complex distributed environments.
  • Solid interest and demonstrated experience applying AI to engineering workflows and product architectures.
  • Ability to critically evaluate emerging AI technologies and identify transformational opportunities.
  • Experience using AI-assisted development, design, diagnostics, automation, or operational workflows.
  • Passion for reimagining platforms and engineering systems through AI-driven innovation.
  • Exceptional analytical and problem-solving skills.
  • Ability to navigate ambiguity and drive clarity in highly complex technical domains.
  • Solid architecture review and design evaluation skills.
  • Proven influence across organizations without direct authority.
  • Excellent communication and collaboration skills with engineers, architects, product leaders, and executives.

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:

  • 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, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
    • 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, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python 
    • OR equivalent experience. 
  • Experience building storage or database systems supporting AI, search, retrieval, vector, or large-scale analytics workloads.
  • Expertise in cloud-scale platforms such as Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud.
  • Experience with modern database technologies (distributed SQL, NoSQL, vector databases, or analytical engines).
  • Deep familiarity with observability, telemetry, reliability engineering, and automated operations.
  • Contributions to open-source systems, storage technologies, databases, or distributed computing frameworks.
  • Track record of leading major platform transformations with significant business impact.

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.

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Sr. Software Engineer–M365 Routing Fabric Team

Location
Shanghai, China
Job Number
200046412-en-2
City
Shanghai
Team
M365 Core
Country
China
Discipline
Software Engineering

Overview

We are looking for a highly motivated and technically strong Software Engineer who is passionate about building intelligent, scalable, and resilient systems at the heart of Microsoft 365’s infrastructure. You will join the Substrate Unified Fabric team, which is driving the modernization of cloud routing through RouteResolutionService—a core platform component designed to deliver highly accurate, efficient, and secure routing for Microsoft 365 workloads across global infrastructure.

About the Team: The SURF (Substrate Unified Routing Fabric) team is responsible for the Substrate Routing Platform, which routes trillions of HTTP requests daily with industry-leading accuracy and minimal latency. With the MIRA (M365 Integrated Routing Architecture) initiative, SURF now handles traffic for major M365 workloads like Teams and SharePoint Online, providing enhanced routing, resilience, and security. The team is known for technical excellence, a culture of innovation, and a commitment to operational impact at massive scale. 

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

  • Design and implement features in RouteResolutionService to support different scenarios in M365 including Copilot. 

  • Build distributed, highly available and resilient systems.

  • Work with services spanning thousands of servers, doing tens of billions of transactions and serving hundreds of millions of users.

  • Drive technical excellence through code reviews, architecture design, and mentoring of other engineers.

  • Build Agentic-loop to accelerate development

Qualifications

Required 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.

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

  • 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. 
  • 3+ years of industry experience in service development, successfully shipping services through multiple releases. 
  • Solid understanding of distributed systems, and AI/ML-driven decision systems.
  • Passion for quality and proven record of delivering excellent results under challenging schedule to work on one of the largest distributed systems in the world.   
  • Proficiency in Rust is a plus.
  • Real-world experience developing large scale online services with robust performance, resiliency, telemetry, and security.  
  • Solid collaboration skills with the ability to work in a dynamic/agile environment.   
  • A passion for improving engineering practices and producing high quality software.  
  • Self-motivated and customer focused.  
  • Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with a track record of working across organizational boundaries. 

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.

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Sr. Software Engineer–M365 Routing Fabric Team

Location
Shanghai, China
Job Number
200046412-en-4
City
Shanghai
Team
M365 Core
Country
China
Discipline
Software Engineering

Overview

We are looking for a highly motivated and technically strong Software Engineer who is passionate about building intelligent, scalable, and resilient systems at the heart of Microsoft 365’s infrastructure. You will join the Substrate Unified Fabric team, which is driving the modernization of cloud routing through RouteResolutionService—a core platform component designed to deliver highly accurate, efficient, and secure routing for Microsoft 365 workloads across global infrastructure.

About the Team: The SURF (Substrate Unified Routing Fabric) team is responsible for the Substrate Routing Platform, which routes trillions of HTTP requests daily with industry-leading accuracy and minimal latency. With the MIRA (M365 Integrated Routing Architecture) initiative, SURF now handles traffic for major M365 workloads like Teams and SharePoint Online, providing enhanced routing, resilience, and security. The team is known for technical excellence, a culture of innovation, and a commitment to operational impact at massive scale. 

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

  • Design and implement features in RouteResolutionService to support different scenarios in M365 including Copilot. 

  • Build distributed, highly available and resilient systems.

  • Work with services spanning thousands of servers, doing tens of billions of transactions and serving hundreds of millions of users.

  • Drive technical excellence through code reviews, architecture design, and mentoring of other engineers.

  • Build Agentic-loop to accelerate development

Qualifications

Required 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.

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

  • 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. 
  • 3+ years of industry experience in service development, successfully shipping services through multiple releases. 
  • Solid understanding of distributed systems, and AI/ML-driven decision systems.
  • Passion for quality and proven record of delivering excellent results under challenging schedule to work on one of the largest distributed systems in the world.   
  • Proficiency in Rust is a plus.
  • Real-world experience developing large scale online services with robust performance, resiliency, telemetry, and security.  
  • Solid collaboration skills with the ability to work in a dynamic/agile environment.   
  • A passion for improving engineering practices and producing high quality software.  
  • Self-motivated and customer focused.  
  • Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with a track record of working across organizational boundaries. 

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.

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Sr. Software Engineer–M365 Foundation

Location
Shanghai, China
Job Number
200046210-en-2
City
Shanghai
Team
M365 Core
Country
China
Discipline
Software Engineering

Overview

Microsoft’s Observability & Intelligent Cloud team is reimagining how large-scale cloud services stay reliable. We build intelligent systems that help prevent incidents, detect failures earlier, accelerate diagnosis and mitigation, and reduce operational effort across Microsoft services.  

Our work spans the full reliability lifecycle—from telemetry and anomaly detection to AI-assisted diagnosis, safe automation, and intuitive operational experiences. You will help create secure, scalable platforms that protect customers and enable engineering teams to operate services with greater speed and confidence.  

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

  • Design, build, test, deploy, and operate reliable backend services, APIs, data pipelines, and automation workflows. 

  • Create intelligent capabilities that turn large volumes of operational data into timely, actionable insights for engineering teams. 

  • Apply software engineering and AI techniques to improve anomaly detection, alert correlation, incident diagnosis, and safe mitigation. 

  • Investigate production issues, identify root causes, and turn lessons from live-service events into durable product and engineering improvements. 

  • Partner with service teams, product managers, and engineers to understand reliability challenges and translate them into scalable solutions. 

  • Improve the security, observability, performance, quality, and maintainability of the services you own. 

  • Contribute to technical designs, documentation, operational readiness, and shared engineering practices. 

Qualifications

Required 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. 
  • Solid experience designing, building, and operating distributed systems, cloud services, or large-scale backend platforms. 
  • Solid technical depth in service architecture, reliability, debugging, performance, security, and operational excellence. 
  • Proven ability to lead ambiguous technical work from problem framing through design, execution, deployment, and production support. 
  • Solid cross-team collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to influence technical decisions across partner teams. 
  • Experience collaborating across teams and communicating technical concepts clearly to engineering and product stakeholders.  
 

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:

  • 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.

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.

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Sr. Software Engineer–M365 Foundation

Location
Shanghai, China
Job Number
200046210-en-4
City
Shanghai
Team
M365 Core
Country
China
Discipline
Software Engineering

Overview

Microsoft’s Observability & Intelligent Cloud team is reimagining how large-scale cloud services stay reliable. We build intelligent systems that help prevent incidents, detect failures earlier, accelerate diagnosis and mitigation, and reduce operational effort across Microsoft services.  

Our work spans the full reliability lifecycle—from telemetry and anomaly detection to AI-assisted diagnosis, safe automation, and intuitive operational experiences. You will help create secure, scalable platforms that protect customers and enable engineering teams to operate services with greater speed and confidence.  

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

  • Design, build, test, deploy, and operate reliable backend services, APIs, data pipelines, and automation workflows. 

  • Create intelligent capabilities that turn large volumes of operational data into timely, actionable insights for engineering teams. 

  • Apply software engineering and AI techniques to improve anomaly detection, alert correlation, incident diagnosis, and safe mitigation. 

  • Investigate production issues, identify root causes, and turn lessons from live-service events into durable product and engineering improvements. 

  • Partner with service teams, product managers, and engineers to understand reliability challenges and translate them into scalable solutions. 

  • Improve the security, observability, performance, quality, and maintainability of the services you own. 

  • Contribute to technical designs, documentation, operational readiness, and shared engineering practices. 

Qualifications

Required 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. 
  • Solid experience designing, building, and operating distributed systems, cloud services, or large-scale backend platforms. 
  • Solid technical depth in service architecture, reliability, debugging, performance, security, and operational excellence. 
  • Proven ability to lead ambiguous technical work from problem framing through design, execution, deployment, and production support. 
  • Solid cross-team collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to influence technical decisions across partner teams. 
  • Experience collaborating across teams and communicating technical concepts clearly to engineering and product stakeholders.  
 

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:

  • 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.

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.

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