The Principal Software Engineer - AI Frameworks role at Microsoft involves leading technical initiatives in AI frameworks, performance engineering, and benchmarking. The position requires a hands-on technical leader who can navigate complex systems challenges and drive measurable production impact. The engineer will collaborate with various teams to improve model velocity, platform efficiency, and production reliability. This role emphasizes establishing technical direction and mentoring engineers while embodying Microsoft's culture and values.

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 8+ years of technical engineering experience coding in languages such as C++ or Python, or equivalent experience.
• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements.

• Own the technical vision, architecture, roadmap, and multi-release execution strategy for critical AI framework, performance, benchmarking, or developer-productivity capabilities.
• Lead technical alignment across teams by shaping architecture and priorities, resolving competing requirements, and holding stakeholders accountable.
• Build technical leadership capacity across the organization by mentoring engineers and establishing high standards for quality and maintainability.
• Steer ambiguous, cross-stack investigations and investments spanning models, frameworks, compilers, runtimes, systems, services, and silicon.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership by setting the engineering approach and directly contributing through prototypes and critical-path implementation.
• Spearhead common measurement, automation, observability, and engineering mechanisms that turn one-off analyses into scalable platform capabilities.
• Drive measurable improvements in model onboarding velocity, runtime performance, reliability, hardware utilization, and Azure capacity efficiency.
• Identify, innovate and productize new modeling and optimization opportunities for frontier AI models.

• Employees at Microsoft are often offered comprehensive, “world-class” benefits—including health and mental-wellness programs, competitive pay with bonuses and stock awards, and retirement/savings options. Time-off and flexibility are common, with generous vacation and holidays, parental and caregiver leave, and flexible work schedules, alongside learning support, employee resource groups, product discounts, and matching-gifts/volunteering programs. Specific benefits can vary by region.