hero

Queering the tech ecosystem!

Connecting our community to great opportunities

Principal Software Engineer

Microsoft

Microsoft

Software Engineering
USD 139,900-274,800 / year
Posted on Aug 16, 2025

Principal Software Engineer

Redmond, Washington, United States

Save

Share job

Date posted
Aug 15, 2025
Job number
1858838
Work site
Up to 50% work from home
Travel
0-25 %
Role type
Individual Contributor
Profession
Software Engineering
Discipline
Software Engineering
Employment type
Full-Time

Overview

Are you passionate about storage and building industry leading software and services? Office 365 is the locomotive that is driving the growing Microsoft valuation, and critical to the future of Microsoft. OneDrive and SharePoint (ODSP) are the set of intelligent, high value services and compliant environment that is enabling the next generation of transformative end-user experiences for Office and the entire company. The ODSP team has an opportunity for you get in on designing and building a core part of the stack.

This position is for an Individual Contributor (IC) Principal Software Engineer on the ODSP Core Engineering team to develop and maintain services that power the next generation of experiences for ODSP. The services we build must scale to support millions of users with billions of files, this work will require a deep understanding of design patterns, data structures and service operations that are uniquely challenging in a hyper scale service.

Your responsibility will be to analyze, design, and implement improvements to improve performance and security, reduce Cost of Goods Sold (COGS), and drive those changes across multiple products. The ideal candidate should have strong analytical, design, and development skills with depth in databases, storage, high performance data structures, and algorithms and a passion for analyzing and improving performance - I/O, memory, CPU, and concurrency. She/He should have a strong development background, excellent communication skills, and a strong foundation in Computer Science. Lastly, because the work is done indirectly on behalf of a large team, influencing without authority is key to success.

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.

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.
  • 6+ years of industry programming, software development, and/or software engineering experience.
  • Collaborate with partner teams to meet the engineering goals in a unified manner.
  • Proficiency in C# or C/C++, and strong design, implementation, and debugging skills; knowledge of scripting languages a plus.
  • Experience with distributed systems, performance. analysis, databases, and/or large-scale data processing
  • Solid communication skills (both written and oral).
  • Ability to prioritize tasks and work independently.

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:

  • Knowledge of Azure services and systems a plus.
  • Experience with financial analysis a plus.
  • Experience with building cloud-scale infrastructure components.
  • Awareness, passion, and experience related to cloud scale distributed design and patterns.
  • Familiar with secure software design concepts.
  • Proven track record of delivering projects that include multiple components.

Software Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $139,900 - $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

Microsoft will accept applications and processes offers for these roles on an ongoing basis.

#ODSPEng

Responsibilities

  • Partners with appropriate stakeholders to determine user requirements for a set of scenarios.
  • Leads identification of dependencies and the development of design documents for a product, application, service, or platform.
  • Leads by example and mentors others to produce extensible and maintainable code used across products.
  • Leverages subject-matter expertise of cross-product features with appropriate stakeholders (e.g., project managers) to drive multiple group's project plans, release plans, and work items.
  • Holds accountability as a Designated Responsible Individual (DRI), mentoring engineers across products/solutions, working on-call to monitor system/product/service for degradation, downtime, or interruptions.
  • Proactively seeks new knowledge and adapts to new trends, technical solutions, and patterns that will improve the availability, reliability, efficiency, observability, and performance of products while also driving consistency in monitoring and operations at scale and shares knowledge with other engineers.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.
Industry leading healthcare
Educational resources
Discounts on products and services
Savings and investments
Maternity and paternity leave
Generous time away
Giving programs
Opportunities to network and connect

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 and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.