Transform Your Career with Microsoft 365 Copilot
Microsoft 365 Copilot is revolutionizing productivity by seamlessly integrating large language models with user data, Microsoft Graph, and the web. At the helm of this innovation is the Substrate Intelligence Platform (DSX) team, which facilitates personalized, secure, and scalable Copilot experiences across Microsoft 365 applications—Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and more.
Your Role
As a Principal Software Engineer, you will play a vital technical leadership role in shaping the future of Copilot’s fine-tuning and evaluation infrastructure. This position transcends traditional feature development as you will:
- Set the technical direction for core platform components.
- Influence architecture and design decisions across various teams.
- Tackle ambiguous, high-impact problems at the intersection of AI infrastructure, security, scale, and reliability.
- Enable Copilot scenarios that directly unlock new customer value and revenue.
You will deeply collaborate with partner teams across Azure Machine Learning, Foundry, Singularity, TCaaS (Tenant Copilot as a Service), Heron Infra, Copilot Inferencing, and Security & Compliance to drive alignment on data movement, isolation models, quota management, and model deployment strategies.
Responsibilities
- Architect and lead the design of large-scale, distributed services that facilitate tenant-isolated fine-tuning and evaluation workflows.
- Drive end-to-end technical ownership of critical platform areas, including data ingestion, training orchestration, deployment, rollback, and monitoring.
- Define and evolve secure data movement patterns across tenant boundaries, ensuring compliance with Microsoft security, privacy, and governance requirements.
- Establish long-term technical vision and roadmap for the Heron fine-tuning platform, balancing scalability, reliability, cost, and developer velocity.
- Lead cross-team technical reviews, influencing designs and driving alignment across multiple organizations.
- Build frameworks and abstractions that enhance operational excellence, including observability, quota management, failure recovery, and developer ergonomics.
- Act as a technical mentor for senior and junior engineers, raising the bar on design quality, code health, and engineering rigor.
- Partner with engineering managers and product leaders to translate business goals into executable technical strategies.
- Proactively identify and resolve systemic production issues, implementing durable fixes rather than temporary mitigations.
Qualifications
Required Qualifications:
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or a related technical field AND hands-on technical engineering experience with coding in languages such as C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python, or equivalent experience.
- Proven experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems in production environments.
- Demonstrated ability to lead technical decisions across multiple teams or services.
Other Requirements:
- Ability to meet Microsoft, customer, and/or government security screening requirements.
- This position requires passing 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 with relevant coding languages; OR a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or a related technical field AND extensive technical engineering experience; OR equivalent experience.
- Experience building platform or infrastructure services in cloud environments (Azure preferred).
- Deep understanding of multi-tenant architectures, security boundaries, and privacy-compliant system design.
- Hands-on experience with Azure Machine Learning, Kubernetes, GPU-backed workloads, or large-scale data pipelines.
- Proven track record of driving architecture simplification, reliability improvements, and cost efficiency at scale.
- Ability to operate effectively in ambiguous environments, influencing without authority and earning trust across organizational boundaries.
Microsoft is committed to fostering an inclusive workforce. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and treat every application with respect and consideration. Only applications matching the job profile will be considered. Apply online using the form below.