Software Engineer II, Foundry Agents - CoreAI

** Overview*
* Microsoft Foundry is building the foundational platforms that power the next generation of intelligent agents and generative AI systems. Within CoreAI, the Foundry Agents organization is responsible for key ownership areas across the end‑to‑end agent lifecycle: (a) Foundry Agents platform to deploy and run agents securely at enterprise scale with seamless integration with governed tools, (b) model fine‑tuning to train and improve agentic performance, and (c) Foundry observability to generate insights from agentic traces and continuously evaluate and optimize agents.

As a  
** Software Engineer II
** within Foundry Agents, you will contribute to building large‑scale, cloud‑native systems that support the full lifecycle of advanced agentic applications - from secure enterprise deployment and tool integration, to fine‑tuning workflows, to observability and evaluation in production. Your work will help enable developers and enterprises to build reliable and effective AI-powered agents.

You will work as part of a team at the intersection of distributed systems, AI infrastructure, and developer platforms, implementing components that meet high standards for performance, reliability, security, and compliance. This role is ideal for engineers who are strong coders, eager to learn, and excited to grow their expertise in large-scale systems and AI platforms.

Microsoft's mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. We bring that mission to life through a culture that values growth mindset, diverse perspectives, and continuous learning. Join us and help build the platforms that will power the next generation of AI-driven applications.

** Responsibilities*
* Across the organization, you will:

+ Implement and maintain services that support agent deployment, execution, and observability

+ Contribute to building distributed systems and cloud services for running agents at scale

+ Improve tooling and workflows for engineering and research through incremental enhancements

+ Debug issues across services, models, and infrastructure with support from senior team members

+ Participate in design discussions and contribute to team-level technical decisions

+ Write high-quality, maintainable code with strong testing and reliability practices

+ Collaborate with teammates and partner teams across CoreAI and Azure to deliver production-ready features

You will contribute to a collaborative engineering culture by participating in code reviews, learning from peers, and continuously improving your technical skills. This role provides an opportunity to grow into more complex system design and ownership over time while working on cutting-edge AI infrastructure.

** Qualifications*
* *
* Required Qualifications:

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* 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#, 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.

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* Preferred Qualifications:

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* Demonstrated expertise in solving complex technical challenges in one or more domains such as distributed systems, AI/ML infrastructure, developer platforms, or cloud services.

1+ years of experience in backend service development (APIs, microservices, or distributed systems)

Demonstrated proficiency with AI-assisted software development tools and workflows (e.g. AI coding agents, LLM-powered development environments)

Software Engineering IC3 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $100,600 - $199,000 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…