Principal Software Engineer

Overview

Team Purpose

Cloud operations are entering a new era. The next generation of infrastructure will not be managed one workflow at a time, but through autonomous systems that can reason, plan, act, and learn across Microsoft's largest Kubernetes fleets. COSMIC is building that future, and this role will help create the agentic infrastructure that makes it real.

The COSMIC team, part of the M365 Substrate Core organization, has a bold mission to standardize how we deliver services and build a modern Kubernetes-based compute fabric with turn-key geo-presence, security, high availability, fault isolation, and automated cloud build out. COSMIC is a strategic investment to modernize our compute platform and improve the agility, security, compliance, reliability, and cost efficiency of services across Microsoft.

As cloud fleets continue to grow in size and complexity, operating them increasingly requires more than traditional automation. We believe the future lies in intelligent systems that help engineers move from managing infrastructure directly to defining goals, policies, and operational intent, while the platform handles routine decision-making and execution safely at scale.

Job Purpose

We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to provide technical leadership for autonomous operational capabilities within COSMIC.

This team is responsible for the agentic infrastructure, intelligent operational systems, and learning capabilities that help engineers manage cloud services at fleet scale. Its mission is to make the safe path the fast path for operating modern cloud services by combining scalable agent systems, operational intelligence, and continuous learning.

In this role, you will set technical direction and architect platform foundations that enable fleets of AI agents to reason about, coordinate, and execute operational workflows safely and efficiently. You will lead complex investments across deployment, capacity, resiliency, recovery, and optimization, aligning engineers and partner teams around designs that can operate reliably across Microsoft's largest Kubernetes fleets.

You will turn ambiguous operational problems into durable platform capabilities, establish the evaluation and feedback mechanisms needed for continuous improvement, and raise the technical bar for safety, reliability, and trust. Your impact will extend beyond a single feature or team: you will shape architecture, unblock cross-team delivery, mentor engineers, and help COSMIC move from traditional automation toward practical autonomous operations.

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

• Set technical direction for a broad autonomous operations problem space, translating ambiguous business and operational goals into a coherent architecture and execution plan.

• Architect and deliver platform foundations that enable fleets of AI agents to reason, coordinate, and safely execute operational workflows at scale.

• Lead the design of intelligent systems for deployment, capacity, resiliency, recovery, optimization, and other fleet-scale operational scenarios.

• Define Sandbox isolation, controlled production access, safety boundaries, policy enforcement, observability, rollback, and human oversight patterns that contain the blast radius of agentic actions in production environments.

• Establish evaluation, experimentation, feedback, and learning systems that measure and improve the quality, safety, and effectiveness of autonomous operations.

• Drive alignment across COSMIC engineering, product, and architecture partners, resolve difficult technical tradeoffs, and broker cross-team commitments.

• Produce simple, maintainable designs and production-quality code for complex distributed systems, while improving shared engineering patterns and platform primitives.

• Use production signals and customer feedback to identify systemic opportunities, shape roadmaps, and change the momentum of current plans toward higher-impact outcomes.

• Mentor senior engineers, improve technical decision-making across the group, and create leverage through reusable designs, guidance, and tooling.

• Champion operational excellence by reducing toil, improving incident outcomes, and making reliable operational practices the default experience.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelors 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.

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:

• Masters 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 Bachelors 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 architecting and shipping large-scale distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, or Kubernetes-based platforms.

• Demonstrated technical leadership across multiple teams, including driving architecture, alignment, and delivery through complex dependencies.

• Experience building production AI or agent systems, workflow orchestration, control planes, or intelligent automation.

• Experience designing safety, policy, identity, authorization, observability, evaluation, or human-approval mechanisms for automated systems.

• Solid hands-on engineering depth and a track record of simplifying difficult systems through durable platform abstractions.

• Experience using production telemetry, experimentation, and customer signals to guide technical and product decisions.

• Ability to communicate complex technical strategy and tradeoffs clearly to engineering teams and senior stakeholders.

Software Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $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

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.