Principal Software Engineer

Overview

Commercial Engineering & AI (CEAI) partners closely with stakeholders to accelerate the transformation of Microsoft's commercial business into a frontier organization. We bring together AI‑native engineering, modern platforms, and deep commercial insight to reimagine how work gets done - at scale and with impact. Our mission is to unlock new ways of operating through intelligent systems while creating the conditions for our teams to do the most meaningful work of their careers.

If you're excited to build, experiment, and shape the future of commercial execution with AI at the core, we invite you to apply.

Within this context, the Support Experience (SXG) organization is at the forefront of transforming Microsoft's support ecosystem through AI-first innovation. Our mission is to build intelligent, scalable platforms that power partner and customer success, accelerating Microsoft's commercial growth through modern, AI-driven experiences.

As a Principal Software Engineer, you will set the technical direction for and architect core components of the Agentic support platform that Microsoft support relies on daily. You own complex systems end to end, from architecture and prototype to production and operation, spanning orchestration, grounding, evals, observability, and the surfaces other engineers build on. You define the bar for how agents are built, evaluated, and operated;

mentor senior and staff engineers; and drive technical strategies and engineering standards that extend well beyond your immediate team.

This role is for a technical leader with a bias for action who will own the architecture and lead the design, operation, and evolution of AI‑driven, end‑to‑end autonomous support workflows that are foundational to Microsoft's next‑generation Support experience. The role sits at the intersection of AI engineering, live‑site operations, compliance, and business transformation, ensuring that AI‑managed support systems are production‑ready, trustworthy, and scalable.

Responsibilities

* Lead system architecture and design for the complex, often ambiguous agentic support platform, using frameworks such as Azure AI Foundry, Microsoft Copilot Studio, or equivalents, while defining the patterns and SDK surfaces other engineers rely on.

* Owning the architecture and run-state reliability of AI-driven support workflows; defining the reliability bar for incident response and live-site health; and serving as a designated responsible individual (DRI) who leads incident retrospectives to identify root causes, owns repair actions, and prevents recurrence across the platform.

* Driving the design patterns that adapt AI workflows to changing support business policies and operational processes (e.g., SLA calculations, case ownership, escalation models).

* Driving customer trust, satisfaction, and sentiment, ensuring AI agents correctly understand intent and guide customers to resolution without degrading experience.

* Providing thought leadership on the security, privacy, and Responsible AI architecture-including rethinking role-based access control (RBAC), data access, case ownership vs. processing, and data exposure-and assuring visible compliance evidence (e.g., audit trails) across products.

* Defining the observability, monitoring, and intervention architecture for multiple AI agents operating concurrently at scale.

* Driving cross-team alignment and establishing scalable engineering standards across engineering, support business, compliance, and platform teams; negotiating and resolving conflicts around dependency ownership; and driving agreements that align partner teams to the delivery schedule for AI-managed support.

* Setting the technical vision for and driving delivery of a platform that enables citizen developers to safely build AI agents for support workflows with reduced barrier to entry.

* Raising the engineering bar across the team by mentoring senior and staff engineers, leading design and code reviews, and establishing best practices for building and evaluating production agentic systems.

* Influencing technical strategy and roadmaps across organizational boundaries, building alignment among…