Principal Software Engineer - Growth (CoreAI)

About the Role 

• We’re building AI‑first growth and experimentation systems that scale across Microsoft. This role is about designing foundational engineering systems (instrumentation, experimentation, rollout, and decisioning) that let teams ship, measure, learn faster with higher confidence. 
• As a Principal Growth Engineer in CoreAI, you’ll drive the technical strategy for how we measure, experiment, and scale AI experiences across world‑class products — while remaining deep in the details and landing meaningful changes daily. 
• At this level, impact comes from building repeatable systems and raising the engineering bar: better experiment quality, better telemetry, safer rollouts, and clearer business outcomes — delivered through pragmatic execution and deep technical judgment. 

About CoreAI 

• CoreAI – Platform and Tools is Microsoft’s AI‑first engineering organization, created to build the end‑to‑end Copilot & AI stack powering products like GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio Code. 
• Our mission is to empower every developer to shape the future with AI, accelerating how AI applications are built, deployed, and improved at global scale. 

Responsibilities

What You’ll Do 

• Own growth through engineering excellence and experimentation — at a systems level 
• Architect and build paved paths for online experimentation: standardized metrics, guardrails, analysis workflows, and rollout automation that improve reliability and decision quality across teams 
• Lead multi‑workstream initiatives that span teams/products (e.g., unified growth measurement, cross‑surface funnels, experimentation quality improvements) 
• Build and evolve core capabilities: telemetry foundations, experiment assignment/targeting, feature flighting, and risk controls (kill‑switches, guardrails, progressive delivery) 
• Partner with Product, Data Science, Design, and Research to turn ambiguous goals into shippable, measurable systems 
• Stay close to the work: write production code, review designs/PRs, and coach others through architecture and implementation tradeoffs 

What Were Looking For 

• Proven ability to design and ship systemic solutions (platforms, frameworks, primitives) that enable multiple teams to move faster — while remaining deeply hands‑on and detail‑oriented 
• Software engineering fundamentals with experience building, shipping, and operating production services or client applications at scale 
• Demonstrated technical leadership across architecture, service fundamentals, and quality (reliability, performance, operability, security, and maintainability) 
• Track record of translating ambiguous product/business problems into measurable engineering outcomes, with clear hypotheses, instrumentation, and decision criteria 
• High data aptitude: comfortable with metrics, telemetry, and experimental analysis — and able to raise the bar on experimentation rigor and interpretation 

Qualifications

Required Qualifications 

• Bachelors 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. 

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

• 8+ years building and shipping high‑availability features for multi‑region, globally distributed systems (resiliency, failover, capacity planning) 
• 4+ years of experience in experimentation with emphasis on quality: guardrails, bias detection, metric integrity, rollout risk management, and enterprise grade experimentation 
• Demonstrated experience building experimentation/measurement platforms (feature flags/flighting, assignment, metrics pipelines, analysis tooling) used by multiple teams 
• Demonstrated experience leaning heavily on AI to accelerate engineering velocity, including using AI tools to prototype, implement, debug, and iterate on production systems 
• Cross‑team influence: you create clarity, align stakeholders, and drive execution across organizational boundaries — without becoming a “piece‑mover” 

Software Engineering IC6 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $165,600 - $296,400 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 $220,800 - $331,200 per year.