Principal Software Engineer - CoreAI

Within AI Platform, the Azure AI Search team powers rich knowledge base experiences for apps of all kinds. We integrate the best of Microsoft AI for content understanding, search relevance, and knowledge sources.

As aPrincipal Software Engineering, you will shape end-to-end customer and developer experiences for Azure AI Search-ensuring customers can discover, adopt, and succeed with AIcapabilities atglobal scale. You willoperatewhere product experience meets cloud services, settingdirectionthatimprovesreliability, security, and time-to-value.

You willbe a technical leader thatfosterhigh-performing teamtodiscover, define, and deliver new productcapabilities-often turning ambiguous customer needs into clear, shippable features and reliable components. Youwill bea trustedleaderswhere engineers collaborate, move quickly, and continuously raise the bar in a demanding and exciting space. You will also apply evolving AI tools and AI-assistedengineering practices to design, implement, test, and ship AI features faster andmore safelyacross UX flows, portal experiences, samples, SDKs, and APIs.

You will thrive in a highly dynamic environment by staying close to users-listening, learning, and translating feedback into product and experience improvements. You willownkey entry points and integration experiences (including partner integrations) so customerscanonboard smoothly, extend the product confidently, and realize value quickly.

You will set technical direction and drive operational excellence from design through production-building forsecurity, reliability, and observability, and ensuring features can beoperatedwithconfidence atscale.You'llestablishstrong engineering systems (quality, incident readiness, and release practices) and use data from real-world usage to continuously refine the productand developerexperience.

Success in this role is measured by outcomes customersfeel:simpler onboarding, clearer and more consistent experiences across every surface area, and secure, reliable features that run smoothly inproduction-enabling faster adoption of new AI capabilities.

• Leadsthedisciplined adoption and continuous improvement of AI tools and Responsible AI practices across the SDLC, ensuring accountability for AI-generated assets and using engineering health metrics to drive measurable process improvements and share learnings.

• Leads engineering excellence for production services by driving diagnosability and incident prevention (debugging, telemetry, retrospectives), strengthening secure and privacy-preserving operations (least privilege), and raising code quality through timely, high-impact results, automated analysis, and best practices (including GenAI) to deliver secure, maintainable, high-performing code while proactively managing blockers and risks.

• Deliversuccess through empowerment and accountability by consistentlydemonstrating, sharing, and championing technical values.

• Uphold team culture, embody organizational values, and practice core engineering principles in daily work.

• Clarify technicalobjectivesand outcomes, foster collaboration across boundaries, and help the team adapt and learn through example andleadership.

• Leads cross-group planning and execution (project/release/work management) by breaking long-term visionand ambiguous problemsinto milestones, driving estimation and capacity planning, and ensuring secure, compliant delivery with operational readiness (flighting, rollback, and disaster recovery).

• Partners with internal and external stakeholders tovalidateuser requirements and feasibility, incorporates customer insights and success metrics (including accessibility/globalization), and advocates for customer security and privacy needs across the solution.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field AND 6+ years of technical engineering experience building and operating cloud services (or equivalent experience).

• 4+ years of technical leadership and architecture.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building AI-powered product capabilities and/or search, retrieval, or data/knowledge services at scale.

• Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages

• • Experience owning end-to-end customer and developer experiences across one or more product surfaces including defining requirements and driving delivery.

  • Experience with distributed systems and production operations (reliability, incident response, observability/telemetry, and safe release practices).

  • Experience designing and delivering secure services, including identity/access patterns and privacy/compliance considerations.

  • Demonstrated use of AI-assisted engineering tools to improve SDLC quality and velocity, including responsible use of AI-generated assets

  • Strong customer empathy witha track recordof using qualitative and quantitative feedback to iterate product experiences.

  • Highly effective at creating significant impact within intricate codebases and large organizations.