Principal Software Engineer - Performance

Overview

The Artificial Intelligence Performance team at Microsoft develops AI software that enables running AI models efficiently. We collaborate with our hardware teams and partners, both internal and external, and operate at the intersection of AI algorithmic innovation, purpose-built AI hardware, systems, and software. We are a team of highly capable and motivated people that pride themselves on a collaborative and inclusive culture. We own inference performance of OpenAI and other state of the art LLM models and work directly with OpenAI on the models hosted on the Azure OpenAI service serving some of the largest workloads on the planet with trillions of inferences per day in major Microsoft products, including Office, Windows, Bing, SQL Server, and Dynamics. 

This is a hands-on technical leadership role for an engineer who can establish direction and lead teams through ambiguous, end-to-end systems challenges. Successful candidates combine strong software engineering fundamentals with deep curiosity about AI workloads, use disciplined measurement to guide decisions, and create alignment across organizational boundaries to deliver measurable production impact.  

As a Principal Software Engineer - Performance, you will serve as a technical lead for high-impact initiatives spanning AI frameworks, performance engineering, benchmarking, and tooling. You will establish technical direction, drive architectural decisions, and lead engineers across teams through the design and delivery of solutions that improve model velocity, platform efficiency, and production reliability. You will also identify systemic opportunities, align stakeholders around durable architectures and success measures, and remain hands-on in critical areas of implementation.

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

• Own the technical vision, architecture, roadmap, and multi-release execution strategy for critical AI framework, performance, benchmarking, or developer-productivity capabilities.  

• Lead technical alignment across teams by shaping architecture and priorities, resolving competing requirements, and holding researchers, product groups, infrastructure owners, and hardware partners accountable to clear decisions, execution plans, and measurable outcomes.  

• Build technical leadership capacity across the organization by mentoring engineers, developing emerging technical leads, establishing high standards for quality and maintainability, and creating an inclusive engineering culture in which teams can execute effectively at scale.  

• Steer ambiguous, cross-stack investigations and investments spanning models, frameworks, compilers, runtimes, systems, services, and silicon; set technical priorities, resolve trade-offs, and drive teams to decisions.  

• Provide hands-on technical leadership by setting the engineering approach, delegating and unblocking critical work, and directly contributing through prototypes, critical-path implementation, design and code reviews, complex debugging, and operational readiness.  

• Spearhead common measurement, automation, observability, and engineering mechanisms that turn one-off analyses into scalable platform capabilities.  

• Drive measurable improvements in model onboarding velocity, runtime performance, reliability, hardware utilization, and Azure capacity efficiency.  

• Embody Microsoft’s culture and values.  

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:  

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 8+ years of technical engineering experience coding in languages such as C++ 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 12+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C++ or Python   

• • OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 15+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C++ or Python   

• • OR equivalent experience.  

• Demonstrated experience serving as a technical lead for complex cross-team initiatives, including setting strategy, driving architectural decisions, aligning stakeholders, and driving execution from concept through production.  

• Robust/extensive experience designing and shipping complex, high-performance or distributed software systems  

• Deep foundation in software architecture, computer architecture, and accelerator-aware optimization  

• Advanced experience with AI/ML workloads and frameworks  

• Proven track record of creating reusable platforms, influencing senior technical and business stakeholders, developing other technical leaders, and scaling engineering practices across teams.  

#AIInfra

Software Engineering IC6 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $165,600 - $296,400 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 $220,800 - $331,200 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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