Principal Software Engineer

Microsoft is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to join their next-generation real-time enforcement platform team. This platform protects users, advertisers, and the integrity of Microsoft's Ads and content ecosystems, processing hundreds of billions of signals daily with millisecond latency.

The role involves defining and driving the architecture of core systems, including real-time decision services, streaming pipelines, and ML inference integration. You'll be instrumental in laying the foundation for AI-enabled enforcement flows, including agentic workflows using large language models and learned policies.

This position is perfect for someone who excels at deep system design, web-scale performance, and long-term platform evolution. You'll need to balance curiosity about AI infrastructure augmentation with pragmatic implementation approaches. The role offers the opportunity to work on cutting-edge technology while protecting Microsoft's global ecosystem.

Key responsibilities include designing low-latency distributed systems, leading architectural efforts across multiple system components, and mentoring senior engineers. You'll work with ML engineers and scientists to integrate models efficiently and guide the technical direction for next-generation capabilities.

The ideal candidate will have 6+ years of experience in backend or distributed systems engineering, strong proficiency in systems programming languages, and deep experience with streaming systems. This role offers competitive benefits, including comprehensive healthcare, educational resources, and work-life balance support.