Principal Software Engineer - M365
Summary
Principal engineer on Microsoft's Substrate & Work IQ performance team, setting technical direction and owning latency, scalability, reliability, and cost-efficiency problems across Microsoft 365 and Copilot, using telemetry, profiling, benchmarking, and AI/AIOps-driven engineering. Based in Suzhou, China.
Microsoft 365 and Copilot operate at extraordinary scale, and behind them is Substrate & Work IQ (SWIQ), the trusted data and intelligence foundation that helps Microsoft understand, operate, and continuously improve some of its largest cloud services. SWIQ connects product experiences, infrastructure, operations, and business outcomes to power service health, operational excellence, business insights, and AI-driven decision-making.
The SWIQ Performance Team is looking for a Principal Software Engineer to tackle some of the most challenging performance and efficiency problems across Microsoft 365 and Copilot. Our mission is to deliver fast, reliable, and efficient experiences at global scale while building the intelligence and engineering systems needed to sustain continued growth.
This is not a narrowly scoped performance role. You will work across software, infrastructure, data, and AI to identify and solve high-leverage problems in latency, scalability, reliability, resource efficiency, telemetry, cost optimization, infrastructure demand, benchmarking, and platform health. You will influence where we optimize software, evolve architecture, change operating models, and invest in the platform.
Success requires more than technical depth. You will need to navigate ambiguity, connect signals across complex systems, understand customer and business impact, and turn insights into clear engineering decisions and measurable outcomes.
This is also an AI-first engineering role. You will use agents, automation, AIOps, AI-driven analysis, evaluation systems, and rapid prototyping to reason across telemetry, explore tradeoffs, identify opportunities, and accelerate decisions. Just as importantly, you will help shape how engineering itself evolves, building more scalable and AI-forward ways to understand and operate complex systems.
You will partner with engineering and product leaders, architects, data scientists, finance, service owners, and teams across Microsoft 365. The role offers broad visibility and influence for an engineering leader who wants to shape systems, drive cross-organizational execution, and make a measurable difference at Microsoft 365 and Copilot scale.
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.
Responsibilities
Set technical direction and architecture for performance, scalability, reliability, and strategic efficiency across Microsoft 365 and Copilot, connecting customer experience, platform health, resource consumption, and long-term system evolution.
Own complex, ambiguous problems end to end, from deep technical investigation and architecture through implementation, production rollout, measurement, and sustained results, especially for problems spanning multiple services and organizations.
Lead cross-organizational engineering efforts and architectural decisions, balancing performance, reliability, scalability, resource efficiency, operational complexity, engineering velocity, and customer impact while influencing teams beyond direct ownership.
Build reusable platform capabilities and technical leverage, turning recurring problems and successful solutions into shared architectures, frameworks, APIs, automation, tools, and engineering patterns that benefit multiple teams.
Use deep systems understanding and data to drive engineering decisions, applying telemetry, profiling, benchmarking, experimentation, prototypes, evaluation frameworks, and production signals to identify root causes, quantify opportunities, and make informed technical tradeoffs.
Lead the design and implementation of high-impact engineering solutions across latency reduction, infrastructure demand reduction, telemetry efficiency, resource utilization, reliability, cost efficiency, and scalable service operation.
Build and apply agents, automation, AIOps, and AI-driven engineering systems to connect telemetry and operational data, investigate issues, evaluate solutions, automate remediation, and transform manual engineering processes into intelligent, scalable systems.
Raise the engineering bar across the organization through architecture leadership, design and code reviews, engineering standards, technical communication, reusable practices, and mentoring and developing senior engineers and technical leaders.
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.
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:
- 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.
- 7+ years of experience building commercial grade software, with much of that experience in mission-critical, large scale, high availability services.
- Cross-discipline and cross group collaboration skills.
- Demonstrated experience setting technical direction and architecture for large-scale distributed systems, including driving complex architectural decisions across multiple services, platforms, or engineering organizations.
- Experience owning complex, ambiguous engineering problems end to end, from deep technical investigation and architecture through implementation, production deployment, measurement, and sustained operation.
- Deep expertise in performance, scalability, reliability, and efficiency engineering for large-scale cloud or distributed systems, using telemetry, profiling, benchmarking, experimentation, and production diagnostics to identify root causes and drive measurable improvements.
- Demonstrated ability to create technical leverage through reusable platforms, frameworks, APIs, automation, tools, or architectural patterns, while making sound tradeoffs across performance, reliability, scalability, resource utilization, operational complexity, cost, and customer impact.
- Demonstrated technical leadership and cross-organizational influence, including driving architectural alignment, raising engineering standards, communicating complex technical decisions clearly, and mentoring senior engineers and technical leaders.
- Experience with LLM platforms, model-serving systems, AI infrastructure, or other large-scale AI-powered systems, including performance, capacity, reliability, or cost optimization at scale.
- AI engineering fluency, including experience applying agents, automation, AIOps, evaluation systems, or AI-driven analysis to accelerate engineering, investigate production systems, automate operations, or create scalable engineering workflows.
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.
