Principal Software Engineer

Overview

Microsoft is seeking a Principal Software Engineer for Azure Storage Geo Replication, working remotely from the United States. The role helps define and build the next generation of geo-resiliency, replication, data protection, and business continuity for Azure Storage, which stores and protects exabytes of customer data across regions worldwide.

The work supports AI-driven applications, intelligent agents, analytics platforms, and mission-critical enterprise workloads, with a focus on keeping data available and trusted across regions at large scale.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the long-term technical strategy, architecture, and roadmap for Azure Storage Geo Replication.
• Drive architecture decisions across data replication, failover orchestration, business continuity, and recovery capabilities.
• Partner with engineering, product, and platform teams across Azure to deliver strategic investments and customer value.
• Champion operational excellence through telemetry, automation, observability, resiliency testing, and incident management.
• Lead adoption of AI-assisted engineering and intelligent operations to accelerate development and improve service health.
• Represent the team in executive reviews, customer engagements, strategic planning forums, and cross-organizational architecture discussions.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or a 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.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s Degree in Computer Science or a related technical field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience, OR a Bachelor’s Degree AND 12+ years technical engineering experience, OR equivalent experience.
• Experience building distributed storage systems, databases, or infrastructure services at scale.
• Expertise in geo-distributed architectures, data replication, failover technologies, and resilience engineering.
• Experience applying machine learning or AI techniques to service operations, anomaly detection, forecasting, incident management, and intelligent automation.
• Understanding of durability guarantees, consistency models, disaster recovery, business continuity, and regional failover solutions.

Other Requirements

Ability to meet Microsoft, customer, and government security screening requirements, including a Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire or transfer and every two years thereafter. Travel is less than 25%.

Software Engineering IC5: the typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 – $274,800 per year. A different range applies to specific work locations within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area: USD $188,000 – $304,200 per year. Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation.