Principal Security Engineer Manager

Microsoft • Redmond, WA

12d

About The Position

The Microsoft Offensive Research & Security Engineering (MORSE) team is looking for a learn-it-all security engineering manager that will help secure Microsoft products.
The MORSE team is responsible for securing Microsoft's operating systems, including Windows, cloud computing platforms, and virtualization technologies. These solutions support the daily needs of over one billion customers worldwide. This team performs security design reviews, code reviews, and vulnerability research on key features of Windows and Azure to make sure they meet the highest possible security standards. Our engineering team builds mitigations, hardens operating systems, builds scalable bug detection systems, improves developer tools, and creates cutting edge vulnerability research capabilities.
In this role, you will lead a team of security engineers focused on eliminating vulnerabilities at scale. Your team will design and develop new security mitigations, drive systematic reductions in entire classes of vulnerabilities, and partner with product teams to refactor and harden highrisk codebases across Microsoft operating systems.
As a people manager, you will prioritize the growth and success of your team—coaching engineers, supporting career development, fostering a healthy and inclusive team culture, and advocating for both individual and collective impact. You will work closely with peer managers and technical leads to drive program execution, enable clear and continuous feedback loops, and help evolve processes that improve how MORSE operates and scales.
The ideal candidate has experience managing platform security engineering teams, a strong foundation in operating system security fundamentals, hands on experience with native code (C/C++), and a track record of operating effectively in high ambiguity, high autonomy environments.

Requirements

• Master's Degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, or related field AND 4+ years experience in security or related field OR Bachelor's Degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, or related field AND 6+ years experience in security or related field OR equivalent experience.
• 1+ year(s) people management.

Nice To Haves

• 7+ years of experience in a software engineering or security-related field
• 3+ years managing security-focused engineering teams
• 3+ years of software engineering in a systems language such as C, C++, or Rust
• Ability to create clarity, energy, and cohesion across the team
• Public track record of relevant security research, especially around vulnerability discovery
• Experience exploiting bugs and bypassing security mitigations in operating systems
• Familiarity with Microsoft Windows architecture

Responsibilities

• Champion team health by building a positive culture, advocating for your team, and ensuring alignment with organizational goals.
• Support career growth by understanding team members’ goals, offering feedback, resolving conflicts, and charting long-term paths for success.
• Act as a conduit for feedback and help shape processes and improvements that make the organization more effective.
• Drive the execution and delivery of mitigation and hardening projects, working with technical leads, partner teams, and other security organizations across the company.
• Contribute to and unblock highimpact mitigation efforts, including tooling, refactoring, and scalable vulnerability reduction initiatives, helping teams navigate dependencies, tradeoffs, and delivery risks.
• Stay current on emerging threats, attacker techniques, and ecosystem mitigations, applying this context to improve detection coverage and scale vulnerability prevention.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level