Principal Software Engineer

Security represents 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. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world.

Artificial Intelligence has the potential to change the world around us, but we must act ethically along the way. At Microsoft, we are committed to the advancement of AI driven by ethical principles.  We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer to join us and build the AI safety platform to deliver on that promise.  Are you passionate about security and technology in society?  This may be a great opportunity for you! 

Who we are:  We are the Artificial Generative Intelligence Security (AeGIS) team, and we are charged with ensuring justified confidence in the safety of Microsoft’s generative AI products.  This encompasses providing an infrastructure for AI safety; serving as a coordination point for all things AI incident response; researching the quickly evolving threat landscape; red teaming AI systems for failures; and empowering Microsoft with this knowledge.  We partner closely with product engineering teams to mitigate and address the full range of threats that face AI services – from traditional security risks to novel security threats like indirect prompt injection and entirely AI-native threats like the manufacture of NCII or CSAM or the use of AI to run automated scams.  We are a mission-driven team intent on delivering trustworthy AI and the response processes when it does not live up to those standards.  We are always learning.  Insatiably curious.  We lean into uncertainty, take risks, and learn quickly from our mistakes.  We build on each other’s ideas, because we are better together. We are motivated every day to empower others to do and achieve more through our technology and innovation.  Together we make a difference for all our customers, from consumers to Fortune 50 enterprises.  Our team has people from a wide variety of backgrounds, previous work histories, and life experiences, and we are eager to maintain and grow that diversity.  Our diversity of backgrounds and experiences enables us to create innovative solutions for our customers.  Our culture is collaborative and customer-focused. 

What we build:  We build the Microsoft-wide AI safety platform that enables our generative AI products and services to be safe and secure.  We enable product engineering teams to utilize these safety services through robust APIs.  We partner with security product teams to provide awareness of AI threats in their environments and take action against those threats.  The safety platform is updated from our learnings and research to combat the latest threats to generative AI services.    How you can help:  Bring your passion for security and safety; engineering experience and expertise on building backend platforms; and desire to be on the cutting edge of generative AI advancements.  Come ready to partner with other engineers, applied scientists, and product managers to architect, design, and build both backend platform capabilities as well as core copilot scenarios.  

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. 

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, or related technical discipline 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
• 3+ years of professional experience designing, developing, deploying, and monitoring large-scale cloud services and/or distributed systems--you have built backend platforms and APIs.

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 background and Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Preferred Qualifications: 

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 10+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python 
  • OR Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python 
  • OR equivalent experience. 
• Experience with .NET and Azure - Experience in Generative AI, LLM orchestration, and hosting ML models
• Experience building and maintaining client libraries or SDKs.
• Awareness of, and ability to reason about, modern distributed software design patterns and cloud systems architecture, including microservices, containers, load-balancing, queuing, caching. 
• Ability to communicate technical details clearly across organizational and functional boundaries.
• Experience in DevOps to maintain live services and\or application frameworks.

Software Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $137,600 - $267,000 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 $180,400 - $294,000 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 

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until October 21, 2024.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances.  We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.

#MSFTSecurity #SHPE24MSFT #Security #AI #AISafety #RAI #MSECAIR #AeGIS

• Architect, develop and deliver backend services in an evolving agile development environment.
• Design and build secure and robust systems with a focus on fundamentals like stability, efficiency, maintainability, and performance.
• Collaborate and drive with diverse partners across Microsoft’s security community to develop innovative approaches for detecting and tracking threats. 
• Be a champion for customer security outcomes by providing timely, relevant guidance and detection/mitigation recommendations. 
• Provide vision, expertise, and technical leadership to other team members.  
• Help to grow talent in these areas.

Other:

• Embody our Culture and Values