Principal Software Engineering Manager

Overview

Microsoft brings together passionate innovators to collaborate, imagine what is possible, and build solutions in a cloud- and AI-enabled world.

The Global Skilling Product Team (GSPT)develops innovative products and experiences that help customers, partners, sellers, and future generations skill, upskill, and reskill. Our goal is to reach more than 100 million learners through accessible, high-quality learning experiences across Microsoft Learn and other digital platforms.

As a Principal Software Engineering Manager, you will lead a team of engineers and serve as a technical authority for the design, development, and delivery of sophisticated, scalable learning and skilling solutions. You will drive skilling products such as AI Skills Navigator, using AI to improve how skilling recommendations and personalized learning reach global enterprise learners, and making learning available to Microsoft’s customers and partners across our products and platforms.

Working across product, operations, partner, and engineering teams, you will translate business needs, workflow constraints, and success criteria into secure, reliable solutions with measurable outcomes, guiding them from discovery to production adoption with the right combination of Copilot, AI agents, Power Platform, Azure services, and custom software. You will also grow your team’s capabilities, helping engineers learn and adopt new technologies, tools, and practices from across Microsoft and the industry.

If you thrive in collaborative, agile environments and enjoy solving complex real-world problems, we would like to hear from you.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, and we’re dedicated to this mission across every aspect of our company. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their highly qualified contributions each day. Join us and help shape the future of the world.

Responsibilities

The Principal Software Engineering Manager key responsibilities are the following:

Lead a team of software engineers while providing principal-level technical leadership and remaining accountable for architecture, delivery, quality, and engineering outcomes.

Guide to the design of architectures that connect workflows, data, and enterprise services, including interfaces, data contracts, dependencies, access boundaries, failure handling, and upstream and downstream impacts.

Own the full software development lifecycle for skilling platform features, from requirements, architecture, and application and database design through implementation, testing, deployment, and production support.

Lead efforts to produce extensible, maintainable, secure, and performant code; stay hands-on in design and code reviews and help resolve complex issues while balancing delivery speed, performance, and maintainability.

Choose the right mix of Copilot, AI agents, Power Platform, Azure services, reusable platforms, and custom software based on business value, feasibility, risk, security, maintainability, and total cost of ownership.

Partner with product, business, and operations stakeholders to understand end-to-end scenarios, constraints, and measurable success criteria, and translate them into clear priorities and roadmaps.

Collaborate with partner teams to identify and manage dependencies, align designs and milestones, coordinate schedules, and resolve conflicts to deliver integrated solutions.

Champion security, privacy, least-privilege access, and Responsible AI practices, including evaluation of AI quality and safety, data access controls, auditability, and human oversight.

Lead the disciplined use and improvement of AI tools across the software development lifecycle, and establish automated testing, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, and deployment safeguards for repeatable, supportable delivery.

Drive service reliability and operational excellence through telemetry, actionable alerts, incident management, root-cause analysis, and continuous improvement of service health.

Promote reusable components, integration patterns, and guidance that reduce duplication, with clear ownership and lifecycle maintenance.

People Leadership and Mentorship

• Lead, coach, and grow a team of software engineers by setting clear priorities and providing career development and performance guidance.
• Mentor engineers through design reviews and constructive feedback, strengthening architectural judgment, engineering discipline, and Responsible AI practices.
• Attract and retain talent, and build an inclusive, accountable, learning-oriented team culture where engineers are empowered to innovate.
• Communicate engineering status, risks, dependencies, and recommendations clearly to leadership and stakeholders.

Other

Embody our culture and values .

Minimum Qualifications

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field 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.

Preferred Qualifications

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 Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 12+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python

OR equivalent experience.

5+ years of people management experience leading software engineering teams, including developing talent and delivering results through cross-functional collaboration.

12+ years of engineering experience building and deploying products or services.

6+ years of experience designing, building, or operating commercial software applications, cloud services, or large-scale distributed systems.

Hands-on experience designing and delivering production software, translating business scenarios into technical designs, and influencing cross-team architecture and delivery.

Proficient software design, problem-solving, and debugging skills, with experience defining acceptance criteria and measurable outcomes with stakeholders.

Proficiency with C#/.NET and React/TypeScript, or comparable languages and frameworks, and experience delivering cloud applications on Azure or equivalent platforms.

Experience with enterprise-scale cloud or hybrid infrastructure, architecture, migrations, and technologies such as App Service, AKS, Azure Container Apps, Functions, API Management, Logic Apps, Azure DevOps, Azure SQL, Cosmos DB, and Azure Data Factory.

Experience designing REST APIs and enterprise integrations with clear data contracts, identity and access controls, resilient dependency handling, and maintainable architectures.

Demonstrated success influencing technical strategy across teams and aligning partner teams and stakeholders on design, dependencies, acceptance, and operational handoffs.

Experience making build, buy, and reuse decisions based on business needs, security, maintainability, and total cost of ownership.

Experience with CI/CD, automated test gates, infrastructure as code, observability, production troubleshooting, cloud-cost optimization, and operational efficiency.

Experience delivering AI/ML or generative AI solutions, such as Copilot extensions, AI agents, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), enterprise search, LLM orchestration, or agentic workflows, with evaluation, monitoring, safety, and quality controls.

Solid knowledge of data structures, algorithms, software design principles, and production debugging.

Ability to communicate trade-offs to technical and nontechnical stakeholders and build alignment in ambiguous, cross-organizational environments.

Software Engineering M5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $274,800 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 $188,000 - $304,200 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.

Insights from previous hires

Top skills: Troubleshooting, Software, Security, Risk Management, Program Management, Microsoft Office, Leadership, Databases, Data Analysis, Continuous Integration

Common previous titles: Tech, Senior Specialist, Senior Data Scientist, Solution Engineer, Cloud Solution Architect, Technical Program Manager II, Tech Support Engineer, Senior Partner Manager, Principal Engineer, Principal Data Scientist