Principal Software Engineer

We are building the next generation of Microsoft Copilot extensibility platforms that enable customers, partners, and internal teams to extend Copilot through Agents, MCP servers, Actions, Connectors, Skills, and intelligent workflows. Our mission is to create a secure, scalable, and developer-friendly platform that enables thousands of extensibility scenarios across Microsoft 365 Copilot and future AI experiences.    As a Principal Software Engineer , you will provide technical leadership for critical platform investments, influence strategy across multiple teams, and drive the architecture of large-scale distributed systems powering AI agents and extensibility experiences. 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.

Define and drive the long-term technical vision for Copilot extensibility platforms and agent ecosystems. Architect highly scalable, reliable, and secure services that power agent execution, tool invocation, orchestration, discovery, and governance. Lead design and implementation of platform capabilities supporting MCP, Actions, Connectors, Declarative Agents, Digital Workers, and emerging AI extensibility standards. Drive architectural decisions across multiple engineering teams and influence product direction. Partner with Product Managers, Applied Scientists, Security, and partner engineering teams to deliver customer-impacting capabilities. Identify platform gaps and create reusable frameworks, SDKs, and services that accelerate engineering productivity. Establish engineering excellence through reviews, operational rigor, observability, reliability, and engineering best practices. Lead incident prevention, root cause analysis, resilience improvements, and operational maturity initiatives. Mentor senior engineers and help grow future technical leaders. Represent the team in executive reviews, architecture boards, and strategic planning discussions.

Required/Minimum 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.

12+ years of software engineering experience building large-scale distributed systems. Proven experience designing cloud-native architectures and highly available services. Deep expertise in distributed systems, microservices, data storage, and service reliability. Solid understanding of APIs, service contracts, authentication, authorization, and security principles. Experience leading cross-team technical initiatives spanning multiple organizations. Demonstrated ability to influence architecture and engineering direction beyond immediate team boundaries. Experience with AI platforms, LLM-based systems, agents, orchestration frameworks, or developer platforms. Experience building extensibility platforms, SDKs, plugin ecosystems, APIs, or enterprise integrations. Familiarity with Microsoft 365, Copilot, MCP, Graph, connectors, or agent-based architectures. Experience operating services at enterprise scale with solid SLO and reliability requirements.     #M365CORE This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days,