Principal Engineer, Distributed Systems
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Join Microsoft’s Microsoft Specialized Cloud Team as a Software Engineer working on one of the most challenging and impactful problems in cloud computing: enabling Azure services in the world’s most secure and regulated environments.
This isn’t your typical cloud engineering role. You’ll be part of an elite team responsible for deploying and operating critical infrastructure in airgapped cloud environments where traditional approaches don’t work. Every system you build must meet the rigorous security and assurance requirements of government and highly regulated customers - work that directly enables national security missions and protects critical infrastructure.
What makes this role unique:
• Real impact: Your code enables secure collaboration and cloud services for customers who can’t use public cloud
• Technical depth: You’ll master both software engineering and operational excellence - building new services while maintaining production systems that can never go down
• Diverse challenges: One day you’re architecting a new service, the next you’re troubleshooting a production incident, and the next you’re collaborating with partner teams across Microsoft
• Elite environment: Work with cleared engineers who understand both development and operations at the highest levels of technical rigor
If you want to work where software engineering meets operational excellence, where every decision matters, and where you’ll grow faster than you thought possible - this is your team.
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.
Own Service Reliability
As a Designated Responsible Individual (DRI), you’re the first line of defense for our critical services. You’ll monitor systems for degradation, respond to incidents within SLA timeframes, and coordinate with stakeholders during outages. This isn’t just firefighting - you’ll learn to think systematically about reliability and build automation that prevents future incidents.
Drive Technical Excellence Across Domains
You’ll contribute to three distinct types of work: building new services, maintaining operational health through break-fix work, and collaborating with partner teams in code bases across Microsoft. This variety means you’ll develop breadth and depth simultaneously - understanding both how to build great software and how to keep it running in production.
Build Automation and Improve Systems
Contribute to developing automation for production deployment and operations. You’ll run code in test environments, validate functionality, and progressively build confidence in our deployment processes. Over time, you’ll identify patterns in operational work and automate away toil, freeing the team to focus on higher-value engineering.
Engineer for Security and Compliance
Work in an environment where security isn’t an afterthought - it’s the foundation. You’ll ensure processes achieve the highest standards of security, privacy, safety, and accessibility. You’ll develop deep understanding of compliance requirements and learn to evaluate new technologies through a security lens.
Analyze Data to Drive Improvements
Collect, classify, and analyze metrics on system health, performance, and reliability. Your insights will directly inform product decisions and engineering priorities. You’ll learn to distinguish signal from noise and escalate findings that matter.
Grow Your Skills Continuously
Stay current with developments in cloud technology, reliability engineering, and operational best practices. Invest in learning that improves availability, reliability, efficiency, observability, and performance. Apply industry best practices while adapting them to our unique airgapped environment.
Build Scalable, Reliable Systems
Apply software engineering best practices to build code that scales to customer requirements and performs under pressure. You’ll learn to design systems that are maintainable, observable, and resilient - not just functional.
Collaborate Across Microsoft
Partner with engineering teams across the Microsoft ecosystem. Understand their goals, constraints, and customer needs. Represent our perspective in design discussions and influence partner teams toward reliable solutions.
Embody our culture and values.
What success looks like in this role:
• Services you build and maintain exceed reliability targets
• Team capabilities grow through your knowledge sharing and mentorship
• You contribute meaningfully to both operational stability and strategic development projects
• Partners across Microsoft seek your input because you bring valuable perspective
Required Qualifications:
Other Requirements:
Security Clearance Requirements: Candidates must be able 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:
Preferred Qualifications:
Technical Excellence:
Operational Mindset:
Software Engineering:
Collaboration & Growth:
What sets great candidates apart:
Software Engineering IC3 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $102,100 - $202,200 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 $133,800 - $219,200 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.
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Microsoft builds Windows, Azure, Office and the Copilot family of AI assistants, and operates one of the largest AI training and inference fleets in the world. Microsoft Research and the AI platform teams work across foundation models, systems for large-scale training, and applied ML in every product line.
Founded in 1975 and headquartered in Redmond, Washington, the company is also OpenAI's principal compute partner and ships AI tooling for developers through GitHub, VS Code and Azure AI.
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