Principal Data Engineer - CoreAI at Microsoft
Redmond, WA
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Aug 10, 2026
Redmond, WA
Sep 24, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
This role owns end-to-end data and analytics architecture for AI-focused platforms, setting long-term technical direction for scalable, reliable pipelines and data systems in cloud environments. The position involves designing and optimizing large-scale ETL/ELT workflows, enforcing data governance and quality standards, enabling self-service analytics, and mentoring senior engineers. It suits an experienced data architect or engineer with deep distributed systems and cloud expertise who can bridge technical and business stakeholders.
Staff level · 6+ years
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $142,568 (middle half $111,775–$173,013).
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Aug 12, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (6)
The posting mentions 'specialized security screenings' but does not gate on a specific US clearance level — treated as a general background check notice, not a clearance requirement.
Degree requirement is marked None because the posting explicitly accepts equivalent experience in lieu of any degree.
The minimum experience floor is 6 years (Bachelor's path); the Master's path requires only 4 years, but 6 is the conservative floor when no degree is required.
The role carries genuine org-wide architectural authority and explicit mentoring of senior engineers and technical leads, supporting a Staff-level classification despite the title carrying no explicit seniority label.
Azure Data Lake, Spark, Synapse, SQL, Azure Data Explorer, and PySpark all appear in the requirements section under an 'e.g.' qualifier — the qualifier signals tool interchangeability, not optionality, so they are marked as required gates with alternatives where applicable.
Azure is listed as 'preferably Azure' in the requirements block; the preference qualifier softens the specific cloud vendor but the underlying cloud-platform requirement is a hard gate — Azure is marked required with AWS and GCP as alternatives.
Read the full posting
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