Principal Software Engineer

We are the team that powers the unified Microsoft Search across Outlook, Teams, ODSP, office.com, etc. We believe access to information is a basic building block for empowering every single individual and organization to achieve their full potential. Today in Enterprises, the most common way to access information is through search. Users find information about Emails, Calendar items, People, Files, Messages, Web Articles using Enterprise Search on various end points. 

We are on the cusp of a massive paradigm shift with the advent of Open AI and LLMs. With this new development, Search is no more about finding information, it has become the heart of the Microsoft Copilot experience. We are embarking on a journey where Microsoft 365 chat copilot and the copilot platform (Sydney) will help our customers and users get to relevant and useful information with the underlying Search powering the experiences at Billions of users across the globe. 

What is expected from you? 

As a Principal Software Engineer, you will be responsible for building and shaping the culture of 3 I’s - Ideation, Inspiration, and Implementation. You are expected to help build the next set of foundational platform innovations that will help scale our Search story to beyond 10X growth. Today, our Search can find information on 5000 distinct Shards before returning the results. We are seeing unprecedented growth in our user base and the corresponding use cases where we need to be able to scale to 50K shards. This requires foundational changes all the way from the data layer to the business layer to achieve our Latency and Availability goals. 

You are expected to redesign parts of the platform and implement it to meet our scale needs. You will be actively designing, developing, and delivering innovative software applications. You will work on coding, debugging, testing, and troubleshooting throughout the application development process. You will have the opportunity to work on challenging projects, collaborate with talented colleagues, and shape the future of technology at our company.  

In this role, you will be expected to have a strong understanding of software development principles and be able to apply them to create high-quality software. You will work closely with other team members to ensure that our software meets the needs of our users and is delivered on time and within budget.  

You are also expected to have extremely strong influencing skills as you will be working with teams from Redmond, China, London, Germany, India who work on different parts of the Tech stack. You will be expected to work well with others and assimilate into an open culture that thrives on Technical Excellence and Open communication. 

You will have the opportunity to grow your skills and take on new challenges within the company. Join us and help us build the next generation Search that powers M365 Chat Copilot. This will help make sure Microsoft remains at the forefront of the AI wave.  

Required Qualifications:  

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or a related field.  
• 8+ years of experience in software engineering.  
• Strong technical skills.  
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.  

Preferred Qualifications:  

• Drive Technical programs across a large Organization of 500+ developers. 
• Proven track record in influencing partners in large Organizations.  
• Experience with agile development methodologies and a passion for continuous improvement.  
• Experience with cloud technologies and distributed systems.  

• Design, develop, and deliver innovative and impactful next generation Enterprise Search.  
• Work on coding, debugging, testing, and troubleshooting throughout the application development process.  
• Collaborate with other team members to ensure that our software meets the needs of our users and is delivered on time and within budget.  
• Continuously improve your skills and knowledge to stay up to date with the latest technologies and best practices.  
• Contribute to a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement within the team.