Principal Software Engineering Manager

Overview Security represents one of the most critical priorities for our customers in a world awash in digital threats, regulatory scrutiny, and estate complexity. Microsoft Security aspires to make the world a safer place for all. We want to reshape security and empower every user, customer, and developer with a security cloud that protects them with end-to-end, simplified solutions. The Microsoft Security organization accelerates Microsoft’s mission and bold ambitions to ensure that our company and industry is securing digital technology platforms, devices, and clouds in our customers’ heterogeneous environments, as well as ensuring the security of our own internal estate.

We are looking for a Principal Software Engineering Manager to join our Microsoft Security Exposure Management (MSEM) team. In this role you will lead software engineers building the platform that helps organizations see, understand, and reduce security risk before attackers can exploit it. At the heart of Microsoft Security’s Securing AI pillar, your team will deliver services that continuously discover assets, map attack paths, quantify exposure, and drive remediation across an increasingly AI-driven threat landscape. You will combine people leadership with effective technical judgment and disciplined execution. You will create clarity from ambiguous security problems, guide the design and operation of scalable distributed systems, and establish an engineering culture grounded in customer impact, quality, reliability, inclusion, and continuous learning. You will also partner across Microsoft Security and adjacent organizations to help customers adopt AI confidently and securely.

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

• Lead, coach, and grow a team of software engineers with clear goals, timely feedback, effective career development, and an inclusive environment.
• Own the team’s execution from problem definition through design, implementation, deployment, and production operation, ensuring commitments translate into measurable customer value.
• Provide technical direction for scalable, high-throughput, multi-tenant services and data pipelines that support asset discovery, attack-path analysis, exposure insights, and remediation.
• Establish a high bar for engineering fundamentals, including architecture, code quality, testing, security, resiliency, performance, telemetry, maintainability, and thoughtful error handling.
• Build a live-site culture by improving observability, operational readiness, incident response, root-cause analysis, and the systematic elimination of recurring reliability issues.
• Turn loosely defined AI-era security challenges into clear priorities, achievable milestones, and well-scoped increments while balancing urgency, technical debt, and long-term platform health.
• Partner with product management, design, research, threat intelligence, and engineering teams across MSEM, the Securing AI pillar, and Microsoft to deliver cohesive customer experiences.

• Embody our Culture and Values

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 a related technical field and 8+ years of technical engineering experience, including experience managing or leading software engineering teams.
• 2+ years of people-management or technical-leadership experience, including coaching engineers, setting expectations, providing feedback, and coordinating delivery across a team.
• Experience designing, building, and operating scalable cloud services or distributed systems with production ownership and CI/CD integration
• Experience leading projects across organizational boundaries and communicating technical decisions, trade-offs, schedules, risks, and outcomes to technical and nontechnical stakeholders.
• Experience with high-throughput, multi-tenant systems and strong fundamentals in concurrency, resiliency, testing, maintainability, and performance optimization.
• Experience with live-site operations, telemetry and monitoring, incident response, capacity planning, and service-health reviews.
• Experience with large-scale data processing and analytics using technologies such as Kusto/Azure Data Explorer, Spark, Azure Synapse, or similar platforms. Experience delivering AI- or ML-enabled capabilities, or a strong interest in the security challenges introduced by AI systems.

#MSFTSecurity

Software Engineering M5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $274,800 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 $188,000 - $304,200 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.