Principal Software Engineer - Backend

Microsoft • Redmond, WA

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

As Microsoft continues to push the boundaries of AI, Microsoft Shopping team within the Microsoft AI (MAI) organization is on the lookout for passionate individuals to build the next wave of shopping capabilities in Copilot and Browsers. Our vision is bold and broad — to build systems that have true artificial intelligence across agents, applications, services, and infrastructure. It’s also inclusive: we aim to make AI accessible to all — consumers, businesses, developers — so that everyone can realize its benefits.
We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer with solid technical skills, a systematic approach to problem-solving, full stack knowledge, and expertise in building robust, long-lasting solutions. In addition to effectiveness, we value candidates who bring positive energy, empathy, and kindness to our team each day. This position focuses on designing and developing scalable backend systems, making key architectural decisions, and collaborating with multiple teams to deliver impactful solutions. The ideal candidate is deeply skilled, passionate about innovation, and excels at solving problems. This role offers the chance to create outstanding consumer products and experiences in a fast-paced environment. As part of the Shopping team, you will contribute to shopping features in Copilot, Bing, and Edge browser, working closely with Product Management and Design teams.
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.
Starting January 26, 2026, Microsoft AI (MAI) employees who live within a 50- mile commute of a designated Microsoft office in the U.S. or 25-mile commute of a non-U.S., country-specific location are expected to work from the office at least four days per week. This expectation is subject to local law and may vary by jurisdiction.

Requirements

• 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.

Nice To Haves

• Master's 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 Bachelor's 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.
• Passion for supporting great quality, high performance, and reliable systems and APIs.
• Designing and scaling high-throughput distributed systems and robust data pipelines, with a proven ability to architect resilient backend infrastructures that balance low-latency performance with complex data integrity requirements.
• Customer focused, strategic, drives for results, is self-motivated, and has a propensity for action.
• Good problem solver; ability to solve problems that the world has not solved before.

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.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees