Software Engineer II - Perception Red Agent Team

Overview

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.

Perception is an advanced AI platform designed to empower security and IT teams to operate at the speed and scale of AI while adhering to Microsoft’s Responsible AI principles. Within Perception, the Red Agents team builds autonomous, AI-powered offensive security agents that continuously emulate real-world adversaries.

We are looking for a Software Engineer II to lead design and delivery of secure, reliable, and safe agentic red teaming capabilities at enterprise scale. In this role, you will drive technical solutions for multi-agent systems that combine Generative AI, reasoning, memory, and planning with security domain expertise, all within strict safety, authorization, and scope guardrails.

You will partner closely with Product, Applied Science, Responsible AI, and internal red teams to convert emerging adversary tradecraft and industry frameworks into scalable, customer-ready agent capabilities. You will raise engineering excellence across architecture, service health, compliance, and security hygiene, mentor engineers, and help the team execute effectively through ambiguity to deliver trustworthy AI-driven security experiences for Microsoft’s customers.

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

• Collaborate with and guide internal and external stakeholders to determine and confirm customer/user requirements for a product or solution.
• Lead discussions and own the architecture for a product/solution; create proposals for architecture by testing design hypotheses and developing design specifications.
• Create a clear testing strategy to ensure product/solution quality and prevent regression in existing code.
• Identify dependencies and incorporate them into design documents for a product/solution.
• Produce extensible, maintainable, well-tested, secure, and performant code adhering to design specifications.
• Use debugging tools, tests, logs, telemetry, and other methods to verify assumptions during development before issues occur in production.
• Leverage appropriate tooling (e.g., artificial intelligence) to improve efficiency and overall quality of work output.
• Review product code and test code to ensure it meets team standards, contains correct test coverage, and is appropriate for the product/solution.
• Design, implementation, testing, rollout and running software services.
• Work in a collaborative and agile environment, with local and remote partners and team members.
• Ship your code to thousands of machines serving millions of users around the world.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 2+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Rust, 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

Knowledge of using advanced tooling/AI to improve work efficiency.

Experience in software development with ability to produce maintainable and well-tested code.

Understanding of algorithms, data structures and other systems architecture factors that affect code quality, performance, and customer experience.

Proficiency with debugging, testing, and telemetry tools.

Experience building Generative AI or agentic systems, including LLM orchestration, retrieval, tool use, evaluation, and safety guardrails.

Background in offensive security, red teaming, penetration testing, or adversary emulation, including familiarity with frameworks such as MITRE ATT&CK.

Understanding of identity and authorization concepts such as least privilege, role-based access control (RBAC), delegated access, and multi-tenant isolation, especially for autonomous or AI-driven systems.

Software Engineering IC3 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $102,100 - $202,200 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 $133,800 - $219,200 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.

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